Iran’s opposition defied an official ban with a day of marching and mourning for slain protesters yesterday as it kept up the pressure on the regime over the disputed presidential election.
Facing their biggest crisis since the 1979 revolution, the country’s Islamic rulers have gone on the offensive, arresting opposition protesters and prominent reformists, clamping down on the media and lashing out at “meddling” by its foes, including the US.
Despite the crackdown, defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi called on his supporters to take to the streets again yesterday dressed in black in a sign of mourning for protesters slain in post-election clashes.
Tens of thousands of people joined what was billed as a “silent” protest rally on Wednesday, wearing green wrist and head-bands in the color of Mousavi’s campaign and carrying banners accusing re-elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of having “stolen” their votes in last Friday’s poll, witnesses said.
State TV broadcast brief footage of the rally. Foreign media is barred from covering such events under restrictions imposed since the wave of public anger took hold in Iran, exposing deep divisions in the oil-rich nation.
At least seven people have been killed and many more wounded in the worst violence for at least a decade, with protests reported not only in Tehran but also spreading to other major cities across the country since polling day.
Meanwhile, Iran’s top legislative body decided to invite the three defeated candidates in last week’s disputed presidential election to a meeting tomorrow to discuss their complaints, its spokesman said yesterday.
The Guardian Council spokesman also told state radio the 12-member body had begun to carefully examine a total of 646 complaints submitted in connection with the June 12 vote.
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
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