Time: In Iran, New Demonstrations Bring New Violence

By Andrew Lee Butters Thursday, Jul. 09, 2009

Pro-opposition protestors rally in the streets of central Tehran on July 9, 2009.

Ali Kayhan / AFP / Getty

The quiet enforced on Tehran's streets by the post-election crackdown was shattered Thursday in dramatic clashes between opposition activists and security forces. Plans had circulated for days on Internet social networking sites calling for demonstrations to be staged to observe the 10th anniversary of the violent suppression of pro-reform protests at Tehran University in 1999. Opposition supporters were told to carry nothing more threatening than a rose. But the event failed to draw the huge crowds that had turned out to protest the June 12 election result, and numerous reports out of Iran suggest that the hundreds of opposition supporters who took to the streets on Thursday were greeted with more brutality by the regime's enforcers.

Earlier in the day, Tehran governor Morteza Tamaddon had promised a "crushing" response to any protests, and opposition supporters who braved the streets were met by baton-wielding riot police and plainclothes security forces, who arrested or dispersed the crowds before they their numbers had time to build. Unconfirmed reports out of Tehran suggested widespread violence against suspected opposition supporters.

Read full story: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1909630,00.html