Today the Iranian people are being asked “to believe that democracy requires one not to vote or that the act of voting identifies the voter as someone who actively rejects democracy.” According to the New York Times, “[m]any city walls that were plastered with election posters in previous elections are almost bare this time. Text messages circulated anonymously on mobile phones are urging people to shun the vote. ‘The ballot boxes are coffins for freedom,’ said one message. ‘Let’s not participate in the funeral of freedom on Friday.'”
In response, armed pro-theocracy thugs are canvassing the outskirts of Iran with ballot boxes in tow to spread not-so-subtle hints about the virtues of “participation.” Intimidation to vote in sham elections is not necessarily something new, but coming on the heels of disqualifications for over 2,000 candidates, which in turn lead to more than 1,000 more potential candidates to hand in their withdrawal, and in light of the repeated resorts to Islamist radical vigilantism, this action is especially insulting.
While voter apathy is crucial to hard-line clerics, and stood at 15 percent last year, the clerics have a stake in making elections appear free to some extent. If successful, they can assuage to a certain extent the democratic yearnings of the average population, while making elected officials dependent upon their position, all while retaining the all-important veto right. Yet this time, the perennially powerless Reform party did not play nice. Instead, they brought international attention, already piqued by the horrendous handling of the Bam earthquake, to the internal politics of Iran.
This attention has brought new understanding of the misery of living under a totalitarian state, and it embarrassed the mullahs greatly. With the U.S. and the U.K. unrelenting in their pressure for nuclear inspections, their aid to Bam, and their military presence in Iraq, the mullahs have not been able to escape harsh criticism, which has in turn led to the above-mentioned protest abstention.
There is reason for grave concern in the coming days, however. Recollections of past, brave attempts to confront the ruling elite have not been pretty; one student has claimed that, “[i]f we try to act their militias will kill us. You see what happened in Tehran University a couple of years ago when students protested. They pushed students from the roof into the yard and killed them.”
Their “stark withholding of consent” has lead to threatening rhetoric in response. According to Reuters, “Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council, used the main Friday prayers sermon in Tehran to attack the reformist parties and student groups shunning the poll, saying the boycott was ‘rooted in the palaces of America,'” the “Great Satan,” and enemy of Islam. Coupled with past violence, and the vague allegations of an American conspiracy, many observers fear a harsh backlash for refusal to consent.
Iranians, electoral rape victims, have little power. Various political groups, sometimes numbering less than 100, are risking their lives and openly, in print with their names signed at the bottom, protesting the government to its collective face. They need any and all help they can get to ensure all is not lost in the wake of the Reform failure. What then can be done? You can sign your name to any one of the countless petitions floating on the internet, you can donate to NGOs that aid the general populace of Iran, you can call your senator and express interest in the issue, and you can above all read and lobby the press not to look away from a potential oncoming slaughter.
Such action is the least that can be done; after all, the paper you are reading and the security you feel while reading it right now come at a price, and are deserved by all.