YouTube shows opposition protest at huge Iran rally

Iran is celebrating its 31st anniversary as an Islamic republic today with a series of vast officially-sanctioned demonstrations. But reports of the brutal suppression of opposition counter-protests are surfacing on the internet – even though the government has tried to disrupt the free flow of information online.

The official rallies of hundreds of thousands of Government supporters are taking place across Iran, but it was in the capital, Tehran, that president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the largest assembly of supporters that Iran was now a “nuclear state”, having produced a batch of highly-enriched uranium for the first time. Celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, which overthrew the last Shah and brought the Ayatollah Khomeini home from exile, supporters carried flags and banners saying “Death to Israel!”

So far, it seems opposition demonstrations have been much smaller than last summer’s unrest, perhaps because Iran’s security forces have been warning people not to take part in them. Oppositions activists say they have received threatening text messages, while the country’s police chief, Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam said yesterday: "If anyone wants to disrupt this glorious ceremony, they will be confronted by people and we too are fully prepared."

This threat of co-operative suppression between civilians and police seems to have been born out: supporters reported that a hard-line militia attacked the convoy of opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi with batons and pepper spray, while two other leaders were arrested, and later released, by security forces as they tried to attend protests.

But videos posted on YouTube do seem to show Government opponents marching in defiance in the streets, waving green banners and balloons to show their allegiance. In one video, a demonstration breaks up, with the protestors running in panic, presumably from security forces. The Daily Telegraph reports witnesses as saying hundreds of protestors were dispersed by a massive security presence as they tried to disrupt the Tehran rally, with riot police firing paint-filled balls on crowds.

The spread of dissident views and information on the internet did not go unanticipated by Iran’s rulers: Iranians reported widespread service disruptions to Internet and text-messaging services yesterday, while the country’s telecommunications agency announced it was banning Google’s email service, Gmail, and preparing to roll out its own state-run version.

Iran’s government has made big threats about the internet which it proved unable to follow up in the past, and it’s not clear whether it actually can ‘block’ Gmail. However, a Google spokesman said: "We have heard from users in Iran that they are having trouble accessing Gmail. We can confirm a sharp drop in traffic, and we have looked at our own networks and found that they are working properly. Whenever we encounter blocks in our services we try to resolve them as quickly as possible.”

An Iranian official said the move was intended to build trust between people and the government, apparently with a straight face. ·