Or is that just for the ones who hate America like him ?http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110214/wl_nm/us_iran_oppositionTEHRAN (Reuters) – Dozens of Iranian opposition supporters were arrested on Monday while taking part in a banned rally in Tehran to support popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, an Iranian opposition website said.
The rallies amounted to a test of strength for the reformist opposition, which had not taken to the streets since December 2009, when eight people were killed.
"Witnesses say in some parts of Tehran security forces arrested dozens of protesters," opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi's Kaleme website reported.
Security forces fired teargas to scatter thousands of people marching toward a Tehran square, a witness said. There were also clashes between police and demonstrators, and dozens of arrests, in the city of Isfahan, another witness told Reuters.
"Death to the dictator," some of the Tehran protesters chanted, though other demonstrators marched in silence. Some chants drew comparisons between the Iranian leadership and the autocrats deposed in recent weeks in Tunis and Cairo.
Amnesty International condemned the authorities' reaction: "Iranians have a right to gather to peacefully express their support for the people of Egypt and Tunisia," it said.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia against secular, Western-allied rulers an "Islamic awakening," akin to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed shah in Iran.
But the opposition see events in Tunisia and Egypt as being like their own protests after the June 2009 election which they say was rigged in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
RIOT POLICE
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said: "President Ahmadinejad ... told the Egyptian people that they had the right to express their own views about their country. I call on the Iranian authorities to allow their own people the same right."
Large numbers of police wearing riot gear and security forces were stationed around the main squares of the capital and pairs of state militiamen roamed the streets on motorbikes.
There were minor clashes at some points across the sprawling capital city of some 12 million people, witnesses said. Mobile telephone connections were down in the area of the protests.
Video posted on the Internet showed young men, some holding sticks, gathered around overturned garbage bins, some of which were on fire. The demonstrators marched toward Azadi (Freedom) Square, a traditional rallying point for protests. Hundreds of marchers also gathered in Isfahan and Shiraz, witnesses said.
Security forces surrounded the homes of opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi preventing them joining the march, their websites said.
Noting official Iranian backing for demonstrations in Egypt and Tunisia, Mousavi and Karroubi asked permission to hold their own marches in solidarity. But authorities refused, wary of a repeat of the protests in 2009, which saw the greatest unrest since the revolution of 30 years earlier.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul, on a visit to Tehran, called on Middle Eastern governments to listen to their people.
The Iranian authorities accuse opposition leaders of being part of a Western plot to overthrow the Islamic system.
Describing events, state television said: "Hypocrites, monarchists, thugs and seditionists who wanted to create public disorder in Iran were arrested by our brave nation ... These people set garbage bins on fire and damaged public property."
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