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Iran plagued with 'despotism' Published Date: March 17, 2010 TEHRAN: A day after his apartment block was besieged by hardliners calling for his prosecution, defiant Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi lashed out at the government, saying it was "plagued with despotism", his website reported yesterday. The cleric, who continues to question the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, said it was still difficult for him to understand how the hardliner won the poll last year given his government's track record. Unfortunately, the (Islamic) republic has been plagued with despotism and elections have become meaningless. It has become only a term," Karroubi told visitors from the central province of Isfahan, according to his website Sahamnews.org. "How can one believe that a president with so many objections against him such as inflation, unemployment... gets more votes than he got in his first election? Ahmadinejad has been accused of stoking inflation with populist policies that have involved pumping large sums of money into the economy. Karroubi again insisted that Ahmadinejad's re-election was "not due to the popular vote which is why we saw an explosion of people" on the streets after the official results were announced. In the immediate aftermath of the declaration of the results of the June 12 poll, hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters poured onto the streets to reject Ahmadinejad's re-election. Karroubi's remarks came two days after hardliners reportedly gathered outside his Tehran home, calling for him to be put to death. His wife, Fatemeh, charged that a group of "thugs" paid by "corrupt" government officials had vandalized the apartment block where the family lives. Iran's Fars news agency described the small but vocal crowd which gathered outside the flats as "students and families of martyrs" of the Iran-Iraq war. Pictures carried by the pro-government Borna news agency showed the building defaced with red coloring, while slogans pronouncing "Death to Karroubi" were scribbled on the walls. Karroubi and former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi have led a protest movement against Ahmadinejad since his June re-election, which they reject as massively rigged. Karroubi was attacked by hardliners during Iran's commemoration of the Islamic revolution of 1979 on February 11 and his car was shot at in January in the city of Qazvin, west of Tehran. The outspoken cleric, who with Mousavi stood against Ahmadinejad in the June vote, has infuriated hardliners by charging some post-election detainees had been raped in jail. Iranian authorities vehemently deny the allegations. Western countries' fixation on Iran's disputed nuclear program is blinding them to human rights abuses, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said on Monday. "In recent years, the nuclear issue has become the only subject that gets talked about abroad but it's the tree that hides the forest, the forest being human rights violations in Iran," Ebadi told journalists in Paris. The West suspects Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge rejected by Tehran, which says its atomic program is purely for civilian energy purposes. Iran holds two sad records, that for the number of imprisoned journalists and that for the number of minors executed," the Iranian human rights campaigner told a press conference to mark the release of a book by her in France. Girls can be held criminally responsible from the age of nine in the country and boys from the age of 15, she said. Ebadi, who has lived in exile in London for the last six months, said that Iran's protest movement was made up of different political persuasions but "the common denominator is democracy and respect for human rights." She said that she would not hesitate to return to Iran if needed but that she currently felt "more useful" abroad.- Agencies [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
