Twenty years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, the image of the young man who was bravely confronting the tanks continues a collective memory especially outside China. While Tiananmen may have slipped through the media's attention this year, a similar event was unfolding in Iran.

For several days after the 12 June 2009 elections, scores of people are went out on the streets to protest the results, accusing the administration of rigging the votes in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They mobilised and later battled with the police and militia. On the rooftops, they chanted, “Death to the Dictator.” As armed men in plainclothes were deployed, deaths and arrests increased. Official statements pegged the number of deaths to 17 but sources say that there are much more unreported and even more arrested and injured.

Unlike Tiananmen where the mobilisations were timed with the arrival of international media who were supposed to cover the visit of former Russian ruler Mikhail Gorbachev, the recent events in Iran had the benefit of new media and the internet which allowed the rest of the world to witness these events as they unfolded.

No doubt that new media has been extremely valuable in these times when traditional media such as television, newspapers and radio are tightly controlled. True, internet access points may be closed down but somehow there are still ways of going around such barrier, however restrictive. Moreover, it has once more demonstrated the potentials of citizen journalism.

But like Tiananmen, the international media zoomed in its lens on the most urgent and compelling story that some equally significant details remains outside the rim of a magnifying glass, that some images have become larger than life while the rest have been stymied as in the case of the mutilated bodies of soldiers that were left on a busy bridge near Tiananmen.

In Iran, the image of a dying young woman created a powerful rallying point, other than opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. She has come to represent those who are twice or more times stifled on the basis of their gender, age and other social categories. Neda, whose name means “voice” has also come to be referred as the “voice of revolution.”

Yet some are poised to ask, “whose revolution?” since there are no images of mobilisations of such scale in the rural areas or people of lower social and economic strata. The cynical would also see Neda as an accidental hero who just happened to be there. After all, as one writer commented, the election in Iran was a battle between “the bad and the worst.” While Mousavi has branded himself as a reformist, he is expected to become a fundamentalist on women and gender issues. It is for this reason that it is difficult to see the mobilisations as one that pursues reforms but rather one that is grounded on the more basic principles such as the rights for suffrage.

Interestingly, images of women were often flashed on Iran's mainstream media television for the duration of the election campaign and post-election protests. Yet then and now, women, their bodies, sexualities and identities would remain the fundamentalist regime's subject for discipline and punishment.

Nonetheless the media (and the citizens) could not be totally faulted for their magnifying lenses. Both Tiananmen and Iran demonstrate the arbitrary ending of collective processing of a collective political experience through censorship. Had media been free, diverse and independent, the pulse of a far greater population could have been reported and represented. To a certain extent, the events in Iran calls for case for new ICTs. But they also showed an apparently skewed distribution of these tools and services as sources of information have been concentrated in urban areas. Had media been truly accessible, people in the periphery would have been able to create and share their own stories and information using the tools which they deem appropriate and strategic.

The chants may have died down while the roads are beginning to be cleared especially as the Guardian Council and Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared unmoved by the violence on the streets. Yet the images and voices of the past few weeks would remain fresh in the people's memory despite the confirmation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's second term.

On 29 June 2009, the Guardian Council, Iran's most influential political and religious body declared Ahmadinejad the winner in the recent elections after a partial recount. Ahmadinejad led opposition Mir Hossein Mousavi with 63 per cent or around 11 million votes.

There is reason to believe that even with the alleged rigging, the votes would still turn in favour of Ahmadinejad, unless perhaps the another round of elections is held under the supervision of an international monitoring body, as Nobel Laureate Shirin Edbadi proposed.

Although the recent events in Iran did not reach the scale of violence of Tiananmen, they have exposed the cracks within Iran's political and religious leaderships. The recent events merely point to the reluctance of a regime in lending itself to a process of accountability. And like Tiananmen, it speaks of a troubling insecurity that will only haunt the Iranian leadership's self-image of control and legitimacy.

Sources:

British Broadcasting Corporation. (29 June 2009). “Iran confirms Ahmadinejad victory.”
Human Rights and Democracy Library. (16 June 2009). “Iranian Nobel Peace Prize-Winner Ebadi Calls For New Elections.”
Human Rights Watch. (18 June 2009). “Iran: Investigate Protester Deaths.”
Peterson, Latoya. (26 June 2009). “Global politics of ‘pretty’ women bends coverage of Iran’s election protesters? ”
Saghieh, Hazem. (25 June 2009). "Iran: Dialectic of Revolution."
The Australian. (26 June 2009). “Rooftop chants a secret weapon for Iran's dissidents.”
Tomdispatch.com (28 June 2009). “Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, The Weeks of Living Dangerously.”