Iran

[loic]

From Robert Fisk today.
The footage of a brutal police force assaulting the political opposition on the streets of the capital has shocked the world. Rightly so, although no one has made comparison with police forces who batter demonstrators on the streets of Western Europe, who beat women with night-sticks, who have kicked over an innocent middle-

Comments

[notorious_oit]

Oh whatever. That guy sounds just like Ahmedinejad and company..."HURR HURR YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN BECUZ UVE DUN SHITTY THINGS TO PPL TOO NOW STFD AND STFU"...it's asinine. Just because rogue European officials did incredibly horrible things does not mean their actions were state-sanctioned or sponsored, unlike Iran's 30 years of beatings, "disappearances," and killings of ANYONE who didn't support the Islamic Revolution. Just because things like social injustice, racism, and sexism exist in the U.S. doesn't mean we can't support social justice anywhere in the world it's needed. Nobody is perfect.

[loic]

Uhh yeah. GO DOUBLE STANDARDS!

[harryh]

It's not a double standard. There is a significant difference between state sponsored brutality used to suppress the political will of the people, and isolated incidents of police using excessive force.

I'm not saying the latter isn't a problem that is important to confront, but the two are different and they require different responses.

[loic]

They're clearly different issues, but in the West we have a history of the violent suppression of dissent too. I just spent much of the last month in civil rights museums in the US South and 40 years ago we were doing the same to peaceful protesters, as state policy. State violence against citizens is alive and well in Europe in the police attitudes to protesters. Nobody really protests in the US anymore so it doesn't happen here so much these days.

The coverage I've seen of what's happening in Iran has seemed a bit more shocked than I feel like we've got the right to feel. I think that does everyone a disservice. Clearly respecting dissent is something we in Western Europe, North America and Australia have gotten better at in the 20th century. Our experience can help others if we don't just presume our moral superiority.

[ataxi]

That "double standard" argument neither holds no water, nor enough to be particularly compelling. As Fisk himself points out, there does appear to have been some rather significant diddling of the electoral figures.

(Whatever the "true" result - and how can an election result be "true" in the absence of any approximation of free availability of information? - would have been.)

Are you saying that these things happen on the million-vote scale in "our" countries?

The Twitter phenomenon that has accompanied the reporting is something new that warrants serious investigation - particularly the evident sock puppet / destabilising side of it.

[loic]

Clearly there are real questions about the legitimacy of the election. I think these largely exist because of the level of censorship that still exists in Iran.

The double standard I was referring is the way we look at state-on-citizen violence as a response to dissent or fear. That is sadly more widespread and common than we're comfortable admitting. We don't like our society compared to those we describe as "evil".

[ataxi]

"The double standard I was referring is the way we look at state-on-citizen violence as a response to dissent or fear. That is sadly more widespread and common than we're comfortable admitting

[ataxi]

Obviously I think that the Iranian government is overreacting and using unacceptable means to suppress protest. I also think that the result of the election is at best unclear - and the true result will probably never be known

[loic]

I think he's saying that it's very comfortable for us to treat Iran (and other "undemocratic" countries) as being fundamentally different from our societies, yet they're not that different.

That's generally what I've heard from people who've lived in Iran. It's not as different from us as we'd like to think.