{"id":18679,"date":"2020-01-09T11:56:26","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T16:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=18679"},"modified":"2020-01-09T11:56:26","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T16:56:26","slug":"obituary-to-a-mass-killer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/18679\/","title":{"rendered":"Obituary to a Mass Killer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by\u00a0Mansoureh Galestan<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a008 January 2020.<\/p>\n

Reports in various outlets have mentioned, albeit in vague and unclear form, huge funeral ceremonies held in Iran to honor the slain Quds Force commander\u00a0Qassem Soleimani<\/a>. These reports tend to refer to an outpouring of grief among the authorities and\u00a0the population<\/em>.<\/p>\n

BBC World Service coverage of the funeral alternately mentioned \u201cthousands,\u201d\u00a0 \u201chundreds of thousands,\u201d or even \u201cmillions\u201d of Iranians paying tribute to Soleimani as a \u201cfallen national hero.\u201d Evidence for these figures generally took the form of video clips from official state media broadcasts.<\/p>\n

In an extraordinary session of Iran\u2019s State Security Council attended by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and held hardly a day after Soleimani\u2019s demise, authorities discussed the consequences and measures that they felt needed to be taken. The most urgent among them: holding a \u201chuge\u201d funeral ceremony to partially compensate for the loss of power inflicted on the regime by Soleimani\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

An unprecedented mobilization all over the country began the same day.<\/p>\n

\n

#Soleimani<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0#WarCriminal<\/a>.\u00a0#Iran<\/a>\u00a0regime claims that millions took part in Soleimani’s funeral. This is\u00a0#FakeNews<\/a>,force attending a state-funeral is nothing new in dictatorships (closing schools, Univs& mobilizing state employees, military, etc. Reminiscent of Heydrich’s funeral.\u00a0pic.twitter.com\/P1gNEvpQGc<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy)\u00a0January 6, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Every single person in the armed forces, security apparatus, government institutes, and government-owned entities was compelled to participate, along with their whole family.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll educational centers for applied sciences in Khorassan province are closed on Sunday, January 5, in order to permit full participation by the personnel along with other social classes in the funeral ceremonies,\u201d read a circular issued a day after Soleimani\u2019s death by the country\u2019s University for Applied Sciences.<\/p>\n

A mass SMS sent to citizens of Shiraz, one of the country\u2019s biggest cities in the south, proposed that \u201cin order to participate in the funeral ceremonies held in Kerman (Soleimani\u2019s birthplace where he would be buried about a thousand kilometers away from Shiraz), free bus services were organized from Shiraz bus terminal Monday, January 6 to come back Tuesday evening, with free breakfast, lunch and dinner being served.\u201d Women and men were to be transferred in separate buses.<\/p>\n

On Monday, all stores in Kermanshah, western Iran, were forced to close down, and students were obliged to take part in the ceremonies. Taxis were forced to stick Soleimani\u2019s photos on their windshields. A lot of posters and leaflets with the same photographs were diffused by the government in town.<\/p>\n

In Varamine province close to Tehran, authorities announced that free dinner would be offered for those taking part in the ceremonies held at the governorate\u2019s premises.<\/p>\n

In the huge Gohardasht prison in Karaj, all administrative personnel, 90% of the medical staff, 70% of the protection and security personnel, 60% of prison guards, 90% of the technical staff, all magazine personnel, 80% of services\u2019 personnel and 40% of the kitchen personnel were forcibly sent to the obituary ceremonies.<\/p>\n

An official form was distributed Sunday morning in Tehran\u2019s primary schools. The pupils had to write down, in their handwriting, a text read to them by their teacher in praise of\u00a0Qassem Soleimani<\/a>. The form, along with required teacher comments, is to be kept in each student\u2019s record. Pupils were asked to take part in the funeral ceremonies after having filled the form.<\/p>\n

\n

Who Was the Vicious Criminal\u00a0#QassemSoleimani<\/a>\u00a0https:\/\/t.co\/FnmOfAhen7<\/a>#IRGCTerrorists<\/a>\u00a0#IRGC<\/a>\u00a0#FreeIran2020<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy)\u00a0January 5, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A school director continued calling all personnel asking them to take part in the ceremonies and to take\u00a0selfie<\/em>\u00a0photos as proof of participation, in order to be compensated.<\/p>\n

And these are only a few of the thousands of measures taken in support of the propaganda goals outlined by the mullahs\u2019 State Security Council. But precise information from inside the country shows that less than 5% of the population in big cities actually took part, with the total percentage in the country reaching not more than 10%.<\/p>\n

\u201cInscription forms\u201d for volunteers of\u00a0kamikaze operations\u00a0<\/em>distributed in mosques and schools were met with even less enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

In fact, such efforts are nothing more than measures meant to give the\u00a0IRGC<\/a>\u2019s forces a minimum boost in morale in the wake of a decisive blow.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by\u00a0Mansoureh Galestan\u00a0on\u00a008 January 2020. Reports in various outlets have mentioned, albeit in vague and unclear form, huge funeral ceremonies held in Iran to honor […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":18680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-terrorism-fundamentalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18681,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18679\/revisions\/18681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}