The shoe is on the other foot - Ahmadinejad decries British brutality toward protestors

UK riots: Iran calls on UN to intervene over 'violent suppression'
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad condemns British government for its 'brutal beating' of 'the opposition'

Having already offered to send an expert team to investigate human rights abuses amid the riots, the Iranian regime has gone one step further and called on the UN security council to intervene over the British government's handling of the unrest rocking the country.

Speaking to reporters after a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, condemned the British government for its "violent suppression" of the protesters and called for an end to what he described as the "killing and brutal beating" of "the opposition" angry with the government's financial policies.

"The real opposition are the people who are beaten up and killed on the streets of London, those whose voices are not heard by anyone," Iran's Irna state news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

The foreign ministry, went so far as to issue a statement advising against any unnecessary travel to the UK.

On Tuesday night, conservative websites sympathetic to the Islamic regime called on the Iranian government to offer refuge in its embassy in London to "UK protesters in need of protection".

In the aftermath of Iran's disputed presidential election in 2009, some European embassies in Tehran opened their doors to opposition protesters.

Iranian officials infuriated by the UK's condemnation of Iran's human rights violations in recent years, have found a unique opportunity with recent events to get back at the British government by criticising the police force for "exercising violence".

The Iranian opposition, on the other hand, has accused the regime of hypocrisy and opportunism in "deliberately portraying rioting and looting as political protests".

Ahmadinejad criticised the UN security council for remaining silent over the riots in Britain. "What else should happen for the security council to react and condemn one of its own members?"

He accused the UK authorities of portraying its opposition as a group of "looters, rioters and drug dealers", adding: "Does Britain have this extent of drug dealers? If this is the case, they should be tried and UN should build walls surrounding their country."

Ahmadinejad said the protests were the result of London's imperialist policies of the past three centuries and of ignoring the poor. "Time is up for few capitalist families with different titles to loot other nations and governments and making them slaves," he said.

"Instead of giving up their wealth to control their deficit, the burden has been put on masses. There are pressures in crisis and it's evident that people would protest in such a situation," he said.

Ahmadinejad said British officials should stop meddling in other people's affairs and instead worry about their own. "Instead of interfering in others' affairs in Afghanistan, Iraq and attacking Libya, they should deal with their own people."

He asked Britain to listen to the demands of its people and criticised human rights organisations for remaining silent over the violence used against British protesters.

In reaction to Ahmadinejad's remarks, Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist who lives in exile in Oxford, said: "Iranians see Ahmadinejad's comments as a joke for two reasons: firstly because the regime recently refused to allow the UN human rights special rapporteur to visit Iran and investigate the killing of protesters and secondly because they banned independent media from covering Iranian protests after Iran's 2009 election and arrested many of them while people see scenes of UK riots freely."

At the same time, an Iranian member of the parliament who chairs its human rights committee accused the British police of adopting a "racist" approach towards "protesters", Iran's state-run Press TV reported.

Fars, a semi-official news agency close to the elite revolutionary guards, has conveyed much of the Iranian officials' schadenfreude over the UK riots.

The agency has repeatedly reported that "UK protests" are akin to the "Islamic awakening" that has been felt across the Arab world. Iran's supreme leader, Seyed Ali Khamenei, used the term "Islamic awakening" to describe the Arab uprisings and Fars said Khamenei had predicted "UK protests" when he said in the past that "the Islamic awakening" would eventually hit Europe.

"As Supreme Leader said popular uprisings will spread to the heart of Europe and today we are witnessing that Britain is experiencing popular protests," an Iranian MP, Mohammad Karami-Raad, said in quotes carried by Fars.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials unveiled a book called "UK's Role in the 2009 Crisis" which examines what the Iranian regime says was the role of the UK government in orchestrating protests in the aftermath of Iran's presidential election, the semi-official Ibna news agency reported.

Source URL