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Babylon & Beyond

IRAN: Rights groups urge leaders to stop the crackdown on demonstrations

By Jeffrey FleishmanStaff Writer 
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Supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi face a critical test today if they decide to return to the streets in defiance of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Friday demanded an end to demonstrations and threatened, ‘If they do not end it, then the consequences lie with them.’

Human Rights Watch has issued a statement in response to Khamenei. The organization said on its website:

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The scale of the crackdown is apparent in the arrest of scores of reformist politicians, intellectuals, and journalists across Iran on June 17 and 18, together with violent attacks by police and state-sponsored militias against largely peaceful demonstrators. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on June 19 issued a warning that protests against the country’s disputed presidential election results must end and that political leaders would be blamed for any violence. Ayatollah Khamenei’s remarks followed several public statements by leading officials in the past week threatening a crackdown against protesters.

‘Peaceful protests are a fundamental right,’ said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. ‘The government needs to stop its harassment and intimidation of its critics, including peaceful demonstrators.’

-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Babylon & Beyond
Jeffrey Fleishman

Jeffrey Fleishman is a senior writer at the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he was the foreign and national editor. A 2002 Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Fleishman was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. A longtime foreign correspondent, he served as bureau chief for The Times in Cairo and Berlin, and was previously based in Rome for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also was a writer on film, art and culture. Fleishman has been a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and a finalist for the Center for Public Integrity’s Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. He is the author of five novels, including “Good Night, Forever” and “Last Dance.”

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