Demonstrations were once again held in Tehran and other cities to protest the way the news about the downing of the Ukrainian plane was reported. At several universities in the capital, students commemorated the victims of the incident and chanted slogans against the government.
A day after the General Staff of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Armed Forces issued a statement confirming the downing of a Ukrainian airliner by an IRGC air defense missile, a number of Iranian citizens gathered again and demonstrated.
According to ISNA news agency, on Sunday, January 12, a memorial ceremony was held at several higher education centers in the capital, including Beheshti, Allameh Tabatabaei, and Khajeh Nasir universities, for the victims of the Ukrainian plane crash, accompanied by slogans protesting the "negligence" of the authorities.
After three days of deceiving public opinion, concealing, and denying reports that a Ukrainian airliner had been targeted, the Islamic Republic's officials finally admitted that the plane had been hit by a missile shortly after taking off from Imam Khomeini Airport bound for Kiev, killing all 176 people on board.
Most of the victims of this incident were Iranian and Canadian citizens. A number of the passengers on this flight were graduates of important universities in Tehran, and some of them planned to travel to their places of residence and study in Canada on another plane after a stopover in Kiev.
Alireza Dashtabi, director of student media at Beheshti University, says the number of participants in the memorial ceremony held at the university on Sunday afternoon is estimated at up to a thousand people, and this level of reception for such a ceremony is "unparalleled."
He said about the event: "The question the students asked at today's rally was why the authorities did not announce the cause of the tragic accident of the Ukrainian plane crash from the very beginning, and the students were upset about this."
In some educational centers, officials attempted to contain student protests that began on Saturday and spread outside the universities by holding memorial ceremonies.
At Allameh Tabatabaei University, the Vice Chancellor for Culture held a ceremony, but a large number of students gathered on the campus and chanted slogans against government officials. Some reports indicate that security forces attacked students at the university.
Denial of security forces entering Allameh University
The public relations director of Allameh Tabatabaei University confirmed the gathering of protesting students on the university campus, but denied that security forces entered it, telling ISNA: "Security forces did not enter the university under any circumstances, and law enforcement and security forces were stationed outside the university, and the gathering ended without any violence."
Despite numerous reports and evidence confirming the possibility of a missile hitting the plane, all senior political and military officials of the Islamic Republic continued to repeat their claims until Saturday morning about a technical malfunction and a fire in one of the plane's engines.
Ali Abedzadeh, head of the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization, called the plane crash due to a missile hitting the defense system "impossible" in a television program, and Hesameddin Ashena, cultural advisor to President Hassan Rouhani, called the news in this regard "psychological warfare" and threatened Iranian journalists abroad not to fuel it.
On Wednesday, some American media outlets and politicians, such as the prime ministers of Canada and Britain, cited satellite data provided by the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) and considered it plausible that the IRGC's missiles had "unintentionally" hit the Ukrainian passenger plane.
Government spokesman Ali Rabiei called the reports a “completely calculated and well-known method of psychological operations” in a statement, writing: “In the future, when it is clear that this false claim is devoid of truth, no one will take responsibility for this big lie.”
Did they lie to the government spokesperson?
On Sunday, the Civil Aviation Organization, Hesamuddin Ashna and Rabiei apologized for these statements, which are a form of complicity in deceiving public opinion. Ashna wrote in a Twitter message that he had been deceived, and political activist Abbas Abdi, quoting Rabiei in the Etemad newspaper, said that he had been lied to.
These lies and cover-ups became more apparent when Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Aerospace Force, took responsibility for the Wednesday morning incident in a television interview on Saturday, saying that the IRGC's air defense system had "mistakenly identified the Ukrainian passenger plane as a cruise missile" and fired at it.
The IRGC Aerospace Commander also said that he reported the matter to higher authorities on Wednesday morning when he learned of the truth of the incident. These higher authorities are the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the appointee of its chief and commander-in-chief, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Slogans against Khamenei, as the main person responsible for the incident
Apparently, due to the direct responsibility for this incident that rests with the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, most of the slogans chanted against Khamenei personally were chanted during the demonstration that was held on Saturday and repeated on Sunday in Tehran and some other cities.
The HRANA news agency, affiliated with the Human Rights Activists' Association in Iran, has published a video on Twitter that, according to the media outlet, shows a protest movement by Beheshti University students.
A number of Iranian artists had called on citizens living in Tehran and other Iranian cities to gather in the Azadi Squares of their cities on Sunday at 6:00 PM to express their sympathy for the survivors of the victims of the downed Ukrainian airliner.
Some of these artists, including filmmaker Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, later announced that they were withdrawing their invitation due to threats and pressure from security agents. Nevertheless, some people gathered in Tehran's Azadi Square and some other cities and chanted slogans against the government. ILNA news agency put the number of people present in Tehran's Azadi Square at between two and three thousand.
Many videos have been published on social media that apparently show protest gatherings in the streets around Azadi Square in Tehran and some other cities, such as Yazd, Isfahan, Rasht, Shiraz, Mashhad, Babol, Semnan, Kermanshah, Arak, and so on.
Some of the slogans heard in these videos are: “Commander-in-Chief, resign, resign,” “Our shame, our shame, our leader is a fool,” “We did not kill to compromise, we praise the killer leader,” “Death to the principle of Velayat al-Faqih,” “The IRGC commits crimes, the leader supports them.”
It is said that in some parts of Tehran and some cities, security officers have thrown tear gas at demonstrators, and in some cases, plainclothes forces have beaten protesters.
Fars News Agency, a media outlet close to the security forces and the IRGC, had previously claimed that Khamenei was unaware of the reality of what happened on Wednesday morning until Friday.
Mehdi Karroubi, a representative protesting the announced results of the 2009 elections and who has been under house arrest for ten years without a judicial warrant, wrote in an open letter to the Leader of the Islamic Republic that he "without a doubt" does not have any of the conditions and qualities required for this position according to the constitution.
Khamenei: Partner in Deception or Unaware Commander?
He tells Khamenei that if he has been aware of the reality of the missile hitting the passenger plane since Wednesday morning, it means that he has "given permission to military, security, and propaganda officials to deceive the people with knowledge of the matter."
Karroubi continued: "And if, as they say, you were not aware of this disaster and did not pursue the discovery of the truth, then tell me what kind of commander-in-chief of the forces you are that they are playing you and the country like this."
According to some members of parliament and according to other evidence, until Friday, President Hassan Rouhani and even Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, were not informed of the reality of the Ukrainian plane crash.
If this is true, it shows that the “hidden government” backed by the absolute authority of the jurist does not value the “elected government” much, let alone the citizens and public opinion. Apparently, this is why the IRGC continues to contradict itself; on Saturday, the IRGC’s aerospace commander said in front of television cameras and the public that he had learned about the incident on Wednesday morning and had reported it to his superiors; on Sunday, the IRGC’s commander-in-chief, Hossein Salami, told the “elected representatives of the people” in parliament that he was “confident” that the plane had been targeted by a missile on Wednesday evening.
Source: DW
