#Iran: Defiant youth vow to boycott election and target the Interior Ministry

Iranian youth, who led the uprisings in November 2019 and January 2020, vowed to boycott what the upcoming parliamentary election next Friday, which they call a shame - writes Shahin Gobadi

In addition to writing graffiti on walls in Tehran and many other cities, earlier this morning, they targeted the Iranian regime’s Interior Ministry, located in Tehran’s Fatemi Street. Parts of the building caught fire. The Ministry, played a major role in putting down the November uprising, in which more than 1,500 protesters were shot and killed. The Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, who had called for the crackdown on the November 2019 uprising, thanked the State Security Force and the IRGC for the massacre of the protesters.

On December 17, 2019, in response to a question by Mahmoud Sadeqi, the Majlis (Parliament) deputy from Karaj, as to why protesters had been shot in the head during the uprising, he said replied, “Well, they were shot in the leg too.”

Yesterday, students at Tehran’s Polytechnic University staged a protest in which they chanted, “Neither the ballot box, nor vote, election boycott” and “People grapple with poverty, the mullahs think of votes.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Hassan Rouhani and other senior officials concerned over a low turnout, have appealed to the people to participate. Friday prayer leaders across the country described the election as “a divine test,” “prayers,” and “more compulsory than prayer and fasting,” and warned that non-participation would constitute “siding with the enemy and treachery,”

Despite the appeals and threats there is every indication that a vast majority of Iranians are going to stay away from the polls.  A student activist in Tehran, who identified himself as Kaveh, said that the Iranian people, especially the young people will boycott this sham because the see  the overthrow of the ruling regime, which he described as being “incompetent” and “corrupt,” the only way to provide the people with the opportunity to participate in a genuinely free election. “How can you expect a totalitarian regime to hold free elections,” he asked?

An agency affiliated with the state radio and television broadcasting conducted a poll on its Telegram channel, despite the widespread of participation of the paramilitary Bassij and the IRGC, 82 percent said they would not vote. Fearing the repercussions of this poll, the state radio and tv immediately removed it from its Telegram channel.

The Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi said that the Iranian people had cast their real vote with their chants of death to Khamenei during the November 2019 and January 2020 uprisings. She added that boycotting the election was a patriotic duty and a bond with the galaxy of martyrs, especially the 1,500 martyrs of the November 2019 uprising. By chanting “death to the principle of the velayat-e faqih (absolute clerical rule,” “death to the oppressor, be it the Shah or the Leader,” the Iranian people made it clear that they seek a future without the Shah or the mullahs, and based on democracy and a republic by the people.

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