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thing is that it's often not in the interest of a state to directly violate the civil rights of the population because the fact that it's being done by agents of the state makes the violations into a directly political matter. so these attacks on demos in favor of the opposition and imprisonments etc. have had the effect of galvanizing opposition to ahmadinejad.
at the same time, there's a real problem in a situation such as this for an opposition movement to the extent that there are very few if any options within the existing political system for the redress of problems/grievances etc.
given that, opposition actions are pushed outside the normal operation of the machinery and so are more likely to be treated in the way they're being treated.
given the way in which the clerics who run the show have used the rhetoric of the revolution to maintain themselves in power ideologically, and from what i've read over the past months when i've looked at reports about internal politics in iran since the election debacle, it's pretty obvious that rhetorically the ahmadinejad administration is more than willing to cast the opposition as a threat to the existence of the state--agents of the americans, so the functional equivalent of "terrorists" in the language of the bush people---you know, a kind of redrawing of the us/them line.
once that move is made, it becomes all to easy to engage in violence against citizens.
there's no obvious way to stop it from happening
if that's the case, then it's really quite important that organizations like amnesty publish the reports like this and that these reports get attention internationally. consider it a kind of invisible pressure (which can spill over into quite tangible pressure) on ahmadinejad and the council of clerics to show restraint in their treatment of opposition. such pressure is about the only mechanism that's available (mechanism may be too optimistic a word) for pressure to be brought.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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