Students heckle Iranian president

[democratic]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4072887.stm

BBC News

Iranian students have interrupted a speech by President Mohammad Khatami to mark Student Day at Tehran university.
Students chanted "Shame on you" and "Where are your promised freedoms?" to express their frustration with the failure of Iran's reform movement.

A visibly-shaken Khatami defended his record and criticised the powerful hardliners who have closed newspapers and jailed dissidents.

He asked students to stop heckling and accused his critics of intolerance.

But student leader Abdollah Momeni complained that there was is no difference between the president and the authoritarians who thwarted his reform programme.

"Students are very disappointed because they paid a heavy price for supporting Khatami, but in return they got nothing," he is quoted as saying by Reuters.

A statement distributed by one pro-reform student group at the meeting said: "Unfortunately what Khatami sees as his tolerance was his extreme weakness towards the opponents of democracy".

[Ian David]

1. And this is a country we want to bomb?

God help them if we come to "liberate" them.

[neweurope]

2. Do they have orange suits yet?

[PsychoDad]

3. It's sad when you realize...

That sort of protest and dissent isn't allowed in the USA.

Had that been the US, the audience would have been pre screened, and others sent to "first admendment" zones far from the speech... All to foster the illusion of democracy.

Any "hecklers" (read protestors) who had managed to slip in would have been draged out and arrested.

Makes me want to cry

[Just Me]

5. It really has gotten that bad during the Busholini rule.

And, it makes me want to cry, too.

ADD: BUT I AM FAR MORE ANGRY THAN SAD :grr:

[Warpy]

4. Iran will have a second revolution to overthrow the mullahs

but only if the US is not allowed to interfere, and Israel is kept on a short leash. The majority of the population is now too young to remember the Shah,too young to know about SAVAK, too young to remember the anti Western hysteria that was coopted by the hardline religious nuts and turned into their present system.

They do know how that system has miserably failed them, and they are ready to act to change it.

Only if the US gives them an external enemy will the mullahs be able to hold onto power.