The Times
Martin Fletcher
She is not alone. Across the darkened city, from rooftops and through open windows, thousands of others do the same to form one great chorus of protest — a collective wail of anger against a reviled regime that no amount of riot police and Basiji militia can stop. “It sounds like the wailing of wolves,” said one Tehrani.
And each night, as the street demonstrations are crushed with overwhelming force and the regime cracks down on all other forms of dissent, it grows steadily louder and more insistent, not just in Tehran but in other densely populated cities of the Islamic Republic.
“It’s the way we reassure ourselves that we are still here and we are still together,” says Nushin, a woman who has never dared to rebel before.
“This is what people did before the revolution and I hope it warns the regime about what could happen if it doesn’t change its way.
“And because I’m a religious person the sound resonating in the neighbourhood makes me feel better. Even my little daughter joins me, and I can see how she feels that she is part of something bigger. It is our unique way of civil disobedience and what’s interesting is that it increases every time they do something that makes people angrier.”
Ever resourceful, the opposition has developed other ways of showing dissent short of wearing green or taking to the streets. They honk their horns, and they drive their cars and motorbikes with their headlights on. But the hour of chanting is anonymous, safe and almost impossible for the security forces to stop. Who could arrest someone for shouting their praise of God? Hossein, a young engineer, is another nightly participant. “The first time I did it, it was in protest to the theft of my vote, the insult that the President had made towards us,” he told The Times. But after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, ruled out any compromise in his sermon last Friday, “it has become much more than that. It is the people’s way of saying that they are still together and will stay that way until they reach their goal. It has become a way of getting out our anger when we can’t protest and to keep it going . . . It makes me happy to hear others, it reminds me that I’m not alone.”
In many ways this has been a high-tech rebellion, with the opposition using video clips shot with mobile phones, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and the internet to generate outrage around the world. But the rooftop protests are the precise opposite and a deliberate and resonant throwback to an earlier age.
It is what Iranians did before the revolution of 1979. From their roofs, they would shout Allahu akbar” to support Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei in his battle against the tyranny of the former Shah. That a later generation should now be using the very same weapon against the regime that Khomeini helped to establish is an irony lost on no one.
Frontline tweets
16.00 A girl was shooted in Baharestan Sq, they don’t allow people to help shooted girl 16.00 See many people with broken arms/legs/ heads blood everywhere — pepper gas like war
16.30 They were waiting for us — they all have guns and riot uniforms — it was like a mouse trap — people being shot like animals
16.40 Saw 7/8 militia beating one woman with baton on ground — sure that she is dead
16.45 All shops closed — nowhere to go — they follow people with helicopters — smoke and fire is everywhere
17.00 Rumour they are tracking high use of phone lines to find internet users — must move from here now
17.15 In Baharestan we saw militia with axe chopping people like meat — blood everywhere — like butcher — Allah Akbar
17.30 They pull away the dead into trucks — like factory — no human can do this — we beg Allah for save us
18.00 Don’t know when we can get internet — they take one of us, they will torture and get names — now we must move fast
22.00 Baharestan Sq was Tiananmen Sq today!
