Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called off a trip to Libya for an African Union summit yesterday that would have given him another chance to appear at an international forum after his disputed re-election.
A spokesman at Ahmadinejad’s office said the visit had been cancelled. He gave no reason. It would have been the president’s second foray abroad since the June 12 poll set off Iran’s most dramatic internal unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
In a show of confidence, Ahmadinejad had attended a regional summit in Russia four days after the vote, ignoring huge street protests by supporters of losing candidates Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, who both say the election was rigged.
The Guardian Council, a supervisory body, on Monday endorsed the election result and dismissed complaints of irregularities, saying a partial recount had shown these were baseless.
But Karoubi, a reformist cleric who came fourth in the poll, remained defiant, saying in a statement posted on his party’s Web site that he viewed Ahmadinejad’s government as illegitimate.
Karoubi and Mousavi, a moderate former prime minister, have both called for the election to be annulled and held again.
“I don’t consider this government legitimate,” Karoubi said. “I will continue my fight under any condition by every means, and I’m ready to cooperate with pro-reform people and groups.”
The government halted the publication yesterday of Karoubi’s Etemad Melli party’s newspaper after said he would refuse to recognize Ahmadinejad’s re-election, the party said on its Web site.
“They wanted the statement censored and not published — so the newspaper will not be published today,” the party said.
The newspaper is one of the few reformist publications to have survived a crackdown under Ahmadinejad’s rule. However, it chief editor Mohammad Ghoochani is among scores of reformist leaders and journalists detained in a crackdown on activists and protesters in the wake of the disputed election.
Karoubi, a white-bearded cleric who was close to Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, demanded the release of “thousands” of people arrested during the unrest.
“What is most important now is to preserve our revolutionary and political attitude and confront those who want to sideline us. We should all preserve our revolutionary unity,” he said.
Iran has accused foreign powers, notably Britain and the US, of fomenting the post-election demonstrations.
The semi-official Fars news agency said one of three local staff of the British embassy still detained in Tehran had helped organize the protests, in which at least 20 people were killed.
“Among the three detained British embassy staff there was one who ... had a remarkable role during the recent unrest in managing it behind the scenes,” it said, citing no source.
The authorities detained nine Iranian employees at the British embassy on Sunday. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Monday five had been freed and four were still being questioned.
The report by Fars, which first reported the detentions, suggested that another employee had been freed since then.
As hardliners try to consolidate their grip, the next formal step is for Khamenei to confirm Ahmadinejad as president. Parliament will swear him in a few weeks later.
“I will not take part in any ceremonies related to this government such as the swearing-in ceremony,” Karoubi said.
He has ridiculed statements by Ahmadinejad and his allies that the protests were part of a foreign-inspired conspiracy to instigate a “velvet revolution” to topple the 30-year-old Islamic Republic.
“Dozens of political and religious people were arrested and sent to prisons and solitary confinement to push them to confess about [plotting] a color revolution,” Karoubi said.
“Such velvet revolutions happened in former Soviet countries ... Have we become part of the former Soviet Union?” he said.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS