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A Second Wave of Popular Anger Is Building in Iran
(Wall Street Journal) Margherita Stancati - A new wave of popular anger is rising in Iran, as people enraged by last month's mass killings of protesters vent their antipathy for the regime despite the risks of a continuing crackdown. At funerals and memorial services, crowds of mourners shout, "Death to Khamenei!" University students in Mashhad, Tabriz and Shiraz held memorial events last week for fellow students who were killed. Medical students in Shiraz held a sit-in for several days, chanting slogans in support of protesters who had been killed and doctors who were arrested for treating the injured. Former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, a prominent dissident who has been under house arrest in Tehran for years, said the scale of the killing shows the Islamic Republic can't be reformed and must be replaced. "When you were wearing the uniform of war against your own people, you were striking your own roots with an ax," Mousavi said, marking his sharpest rebuke of the Islamic Republic to date. More than 50,000 people have been arrested since late December, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a U.S.-based rights group. Many of the detained people were arrested in their homes or while seeking medical treatment in the aftermath of the crackdown. Merchants at Tehran's Grand Bazaar - where the protests first flared up - called on shopkeepers nationwide to take to the streets again on Feb. 17-18 to mark the end of the traditional 40-day mourning period for the killings that occurred Jan. 8-9. The goal was to "avenge the greatest street massacre in contemporary history."