Some 200 students held a demonstration outside the British
embassy in Tehran on Sunday to protest at what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
called the “savage” police treatment of people involved in street
unrest in London last week.
Watched by around 50 riot police, some students threw eggs
towards the embassy compound and at the end of the protest they held up masks
of Mark Duggan, the man whose shooting by police sparked the protests and riots
in Britain.
Some protesters carried anti-British placards. One read:
“London 2011, Tehran 1979, throw off your shah!” a reference to
Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution which overthrew a Western-backed king.
For many years Iran has been on the receiving end of
criticism from Western countries over its human rights record, especially the
crushing of demonstrations after the re-election of President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad in June 2009.
Iranian politicians have called on the United Nations to
condemn Britain. The leader of the Basij militia, which battled
anti-Ahmadinejad protesters in 2009, offered to send his forces to London,
Liverpool and Birmingham “to act as a peacekeeping force and a buffer
between repressive forces of the royal regime and the British people”.
Hojat Alamdari, a 26-year-old engineering student at the
protest, told Reuters TV: “People around the world don’t link the issues
of Great Britain to looting by rioters. The problem is that the people of that
country have demands and certain rights, and are calling on their government to
rectify their political and economic issues.”
Britain’s top diplomat in Tehran has told the government she
would be happy to discuss events in Britain and encouraged Iran to allow a UN
human rights rapporteur for Iran to be allowed into the country to look into
its crackdown on the opposition and frequent use of the death penalty.
Other countries long used to Western criticism of their
human rights records are relishing Britain’s embarrassment over the unrest on
its streets.
Libyan state television said Prime Minister David Cameron
was using Irish and Scottish “mercenaries” to tame the riots in
English cities.
Follow us on
