February 11 Uprising – Statement no. 19
NCRI – The heroic people of Iran turned the anniversary of the February 11, 1979 revolution into yet another humiliating defeat for the dreadful regime of velayat-e faqih (absolute clerical rule). Despite all the suppressive measures over the past two weeks, and despite the presence of several layers of suppressive forces deployed since the early hours of the day, the central parts of Tehran were turned into a battle ground between a disenchanted population on the one hand and the clerical regime’s violent agents on the other.
An assortment of intelligence, military, Bassij and plainclothes agents, just about a meter apart from one another, were deployed in all of the streets surrounding Azadi Square up to Enqelab Street and Arya Shahr district. About 1,000 anti-riot forces and 200 plainclothes agents on motorbikes covering the faces with helmets resorted to suppressing protestors. High-tech armored vehicles were also part of the regime’s arsenal of suppression during the protests on February 11.
Nonetheless, angry people and youths exhibited enormous determination and resolve, chanting anti-regime slogans, and clashing with the regime’s agents. In the course of the clashes, about 500 protestors, many of the women and young girls, were arrested at Arya Shahr and nearby areas. People managed to free a number of the detained from the grip of the regime’s agents. In one case, a young woman who was fighting with plainclothes agents was freed by the people.
At Azadi Square, regime forces used pellet guns which led to a large number of injuries on the part of demonstrators. Some of those wounded were abducted by the regime’s agents and taken with the its ambulances to unknown locations.
At Vali-e Asr Square, eager and brave youths repeated the chants of “referendum, referendum,” “death to dictator,” and “we have not given our dead in the hopes of compromise or praising a murderous leader.”
Regime forces obsessively looked inside people’s vehicles in this area, and checked young drivers and passengers as well as their mobile cameras in order to prevent people from joining the protests.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
February 11, 2010