Word: basij
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...Guardian Council's ability to veto electoral candidates and curbing the excesses of an often arbitrary and politically motivated judiciary, are currently under review by the parliament. Many see the proposed laws as Khatami's best chance to deliver on reform. Student rallies are routinely broken up by the Basij, vigilante defenders of the revolution who shout chants like "Death to America!" and disperse demonstrators with chains and sticks. Says one student leader from Amir Kabir University, where protesters had their podium overturned and the sound system turned off during a rally last week, "These militia come inside the universities...
...throwing out the case. But Aghajari, a popular figure who lost a leg in the Iran-Iraq War, refused to appeal his sentence, challenging the judiciary to execute him. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, warned he would unleash "popular forces" - widely assumed to mean the vigilante Basij militia - if reformers and conservatives failed to end their political sparring. The threat was also thought to be directed at the students, but they remained defiant. CYPRUS Annan's Plan The United Nations gave Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders a peace plan aimed at reuniting the island, which has been divided...
...several occasions, small crowds boldly confronted policemen who tried to interfere with the fun. "You think you have power just because you have a walkie-talkie!" yelled a young man on a motorcycle, boldly taunting a bearded fundamentalist from the basij, a volunteer force responsible for upholding strict Islamic conduct. "You see how happy we are," said Vaheed Aghani, 20, born the year before Khomeini came to power, who was wearing a Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt. "Why should the government try to stop us?" Among the revelers was Ibrahim Yazdi, Khomeini's first Foreign Minister, ousted by Islamic militants after...
Even the number of Iranian war victims reflects the country's political divisions. Iranian troops are split among the regular military, the fanatical Revolutionary Guards and the often ragtag volunteer corps known as the basij. During Iran's moderate phase in the mid-1980s, Tehran reduced the death toll by relying on trained professional soldiers for most of the fighting. Rafsanjani announced in 1985 that Iran intended "to achieve victory with as few casualties as possible." But last year champions of the zealous Guards gained a stronger voice in ruling circles. The Guards have scant concern for casualties and favor...
Many of these basij will end up at Beheshteh Zahra, the sprawling martyrs' cemetery south of Tehran, where red water symbolizing martyrs' blood flows from a fountain. Every day bulldozers work at the cemetery, carving out new rectangular plots the size of Olympic swimming pools for those slain in battle. Gravediggers say they fill one with bodies in two weeks. The dead arrive so rapidly that pieces of cardboard, usually stapled with photographs of the fallen, mark burial sites until marble slabs can be put in place. Wives and mothers in chadors, the flowing black robes, move silently through...