Violence erupted in Iran this weekend as demonstrators turned to the streets to protest political suppression by the government. While foreign media are barred from covering public unrest in Iran, a number of websites have reported the deaths of several protesters at the hands of the Iranian police, including the death of the nephew of Mir Houssein Moussavi, the opposition leader who unsuccessfully challenged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran’s presidential elections this past summer. Reports also claim that several aids of Moussavi have been arrested. This weekend’s demonstrations were orchestrated by Iran’s political opposition to coincide with the Shiite Muslim holiday of Ashura, which commemorates the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein. A journalist at the government-sponsored Iran Daily criticized the demonstrations, arguing that “this is the wrong place and the wrong time for the reformist camps to ask their supporters to get to the streets, because this is a very important religious day for the whole of the nation.” A former member of the Iranian parliament countered this sentiment, saying that “Ashura is a very symbolic day in our culture, and it revives the notion that the innocents were killed by a villain. Killing people on Ashura shows how far [Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei is willing to go to suppress the protests.” Over the past week, Iran has seen an increase in political tensions following the death of an influential dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri. Iran’s political opposition, which is denied the right of public protest by the state, reportedly chose the holy day of Ashura to hold its demonstrations given the cultural prohibitions against killing during the weeks surrounding the holiday.
The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Eritrea for its alleged support of armed rebel groups in Somalia. The sanctions—which are the first imposed by the council since 2006 (when it levied restrictions against Iran)—place an arms embargo on Eritrea, and a travel ban on the country’s top political leaders and military brass. The Security Council “demand[ed] that all Member States, in particular Eritrea, cease arming, training, and equipping armed groups and their members including al-Shabaab, that aim to destabilize the region.” Eritrea’s ambassador to the United Nations was quick to respond to the sanctions, calling them “ludicrous punitive measures” that threatened “engulfing the region into another cycle of conflict as it may encourage Ethiopia to contemplate reckless military behavior.” Eritrea has been accused of arming militant Islamic groups that seek to overthrow Somalia’s embryonic Transitional Federal Government, a coalition authority that has the support of the UN Security Council. Security analysts who study the Horn of Africa note that Eritrea’s involvement in Somalia is part of an ongoing proxy war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which has simmered since the birth of the Eritrean state in 1993.
Starting this week, Thailand will begin to repatriate approximately 4,000 ethnic Hmong asylum-seekers to Laos, despite protests coming from the United States, several European countries, and a number of humanitarian organizations. These Hmong refugees are all that remains of a Thai-based refugee community that once swelled to 1.5 million people, many of whom fled persecution and conflict in Laos and Cambodia in the mid 1970s. Over the past three years, Thailand has refused to allow international organizations and foreign governments to interview Hmong refugees within its territory, a refusal that comes amid allegations of human rights abuses committed by Thai authorities against Laotian Hmong. According to a statement released last year by Medecins Sans Frontieres, the last major aid organization to leave the Thai-based Hmong encampment, “We can no longer work in a camp where the military uses arbitrary imprisonment of influential leaders to pressure refugees into a ‘voluntary’ return to Laos, and forces our patients to pass through military checkpoints to access our clinic.” In response to this week’s pending deportation, a spokesman at the U.S. State Department said, “We also urge the Lao People’s Democratic Republic to treat humanely any Lao Hmong who are involuntarily returned, to provide access for international monitors, and facilitate resettlement opportunities for any eligible returnee.” Many observers fear that the repatriated Hmong will face severe repercussions at the hands of the Laotian government for their cooperation with the United States during the latter years of the Vietnam War.