A Dodson Photo Studio

Classic symbol of change.

This is certainly shaping up to be an interesting June, and as one of my first posts on this photo-blog, I am going to try to tackle an issue that I am unable to get any information on.   This event would be the Iranian election of 2009.

Going into the election, we had two very different canidates:

First off, was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – the incumbent, and probably a name most of the world is familiar with.

Next, was Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a reformist candidate who (among other things) was pushing for better relations with other countries (United States included), women’s rights in Iran, creation of non-government controlled media and put a stop to Iran’s “Moral Police.”

On June 12, it is estimated that 80% of Iran’s electorate came out to vote – absolutely historic and totally puts U.S voter turn-out to shame.  It seemed that Mousavi was the popular canidate going into the polls, especially with the youth population.

But unexpectantly (or expecetantly, if you’re a pessimist), Ahmadinejad came out and declared himself the victor with 62-64% of the vote, a clear majority.  Almost immediatly, things began going downhill for Iran.

Mousavi was arrested after his “defeat” and declaring that the election was rigged, and from there, violence began to erupt in Tehran.  Mousavi supporters vs the police.  From this point, it becomes very difficult to determine what is happening because on July 13, Ahmadinejad began to block out almost all communications within Iran.  Thoughout the country, phones are all but useless and the internet is slow with many websites filtered out.  That is when something rather unexpected happened.

Twitter.

I’m going to be honest.  I never liked Twitter.  The idea of reporting one’s every action online for…whoever, just seemed ridiculous.  But with the sudden action in Iran and the communications block-out, it revealed its true power.  And I must say, the existence of Twitter certainly builds the case to have an internet-phone-thing if you ever think you’re going to be involved in a revolution.  I don’t like viewing Twitter as a legitimate news source, but by tracing some feeds, I’m able to get an idea of whats going from the perpective of someone on the streets.  The amount of emotion I feel from these is just incredible.

People sent me feeds to Iranian students in Tehran – mainly supporters of Mousavi – and I must say, when used in this fashion, Twitter is a powerful tool, indeed. Here are some feeds:

Change For Iran follows a student, who as of June 14, woke up to find police forces outside of his university.  Several “tweets” later (saying “tweets” actually hurt me a little bit), he reports having been tear-gassed.  Now, despite his own fears, is pushing on to a meeting that Mousavi is organizing.  There is word that this may be a trap, but this guy is still going.

Iran Rigged Election follows a Mousavi supporter.  It would seem that Mousavi has been spotted, and he has a estimated group of 30,000 supporters with him marching to the Ministry.

Tehran Election follows a student, and was the first feed I started to follow.  He stopped “tweet-ing” when he feared that police in his area were looking for illegal communication satellites (like the one he was using).  Even though he stopped, he issued some of the more frightening “tweets” of the night, including: 

My uncle, who is a police officer, told me that they went to three polling places and opened every ballot box and burned all the ballots…

My uncle tells me that throughtout most cities Mahmoud Ahmadinejad people had ballot boxes burned.

My Father has a truck load of ballot boxes that were to be burned in the back of his truck.

This guy and his dad are really brave.

It is absolutely surreal that I can get all this information from Twitter – all from people probably the same age as me, and yet if I go to cnn.com, there is only a tiny blip in their ‘World’ section about what is going on in Tehran.  American mass media has completely failed.  What is going on right now in Iran is incredibly important.  Change is in the air, and its a lot closer than we think.

In the next four years, will we (the United States) be competing once again with Ahmadinejad with all of his anti-Western sentiments?  Or will we be dealing with the much more moderate Mousavi?  The last four years, we have viewed Iran as one of the biggest threats in the Middle East.  If this…whatever you want to call it, grows in strength and swings in the right way, that might completely change and we’ll see the emergence of a newer, healthier, more Democratic Iran.

God, I hope its the latter.  I will keep this post updated as I’m able.

EDIT:

I found a new feed.  Iran09.  Apparently riot police have been given permission to shoot. This can not end well.

EDIT:

Mostly heresay right now, but if its true…well, it definitely explains Ahmadinejad’s last minute, clumsy attempt at rigging the election.

Unofficial news – reports leaked results from Interior Ministry:
Eligible voters: 49,322,412
Votes cast: 42,026,078
Spoilt votes: 38,716
Mir Hossein Mousavi: 19,075,623
Mehdi Karoubi: 13,387,104
Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad (incumbent): 5,698,417
Mohsen Rezaei (conservative candidate): 3,754,218