Ah, things are heating up faster than I expected. I was thinking it would be another month before they started again.
AT LEAST EIGHT PEOPLE KILLED BY POLICE IN THE CITY OF SEMIROM
TEHRAN, 17 Aug. (IPS) At least eight people were killed and 150 others wounded, some of them seriously after people in the small city of Semirom clashed with Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) on Saturday and Sunday, officials at the office of Esfahan General Governor told the media.
The clashes erupted after armed policemen, backed by security services and plainclothesmen attacked a large crowd of angry Semirom people protesting a government decision to redraw the municipal border.
Clashes went on through the night and morning, but the city was reported quiet by Sunday afternoon, after the Interior Ministry announced that the project had been called off.
The protest movement against separating the agricultural-rich region of Vardasht from Semirom, some 100 kilometres south of the central city of Esfahan, had started several days ago, but it turned violent after conservatives-controlled police and thugs attacked protesters, according to eyewitnesses.
Mr. Mehdi Taheri an official with the office of Esfahan General Governor told the independent Students news agency ISNA that violence started after some "trouble-makers" and young people looking for fun had joined the crowd that had gathered in front of the municipality.
"At least eight people were killed, two or three of them policemen and 150 other injured. The town hall and the office of the city’s representative to the Majles were badly damaged", he said, adding that 11 people had been arrest, some of them freed later in the day.
But residents joined by telephone blamed part of the violence on the State-run, leader-controlled Radio and Television for describing the protesters as "hooligans and trouble-makers".
"We are not trouble-maker nor hooligans. We had the best of relations with our police. The real troublemakers are those who, in the radio and television, deliberately insult the people, inciting them to violence", one angry resident commented, adding that the protesters chanted anti-regime slogans after they heard the news on the radio and watched it on the television.
At about the same time, another big demonstration was taking place in the city of Qa’en, situated some 250 kilometres south of Mash-had, the capital of the north-eastern province of Khorasan, protesting another project for breaking the huge province into 2, 3 or even five regions.
The Qa’en residents oppose one of the projects that call for dividing Khorasan in two northern and southern parts, with the city of Birjand as the centre of the proposed southern Khorasan. On its Sunday session, the Majles decided to refer the plan to the National Security and Foreign Affairs Commission for further studies.
"Like Semirom and Qa’en, the whole of Iran is a barrel of powder, waiting for a match to explode. Believe it or not, the matchstick is in the hands of the ruling conservatives", a senior Iranian scholar in Tehran told Iran Press Service EWNDS
http://www.iran-press-service.com/