Young iranians have been growing steadily more angry for years | Azadeh Moaveni | World news | The Guardian

In the summer of 2005, I covered the Iranian presidential race that resulted in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s first, surprising, electoral victory. My mandate was not to report on the campaign, but to write about young people’s attitude to politics there. I spent three weeks talking to student leaders and members of the Basij (an all-volunteer, quasi-legal militia), to exhausted waiters and urban hipsters. Most were either busy looking for a second job, or too exhausted from the several they already held, to care much about politics. Those who did not face cash problems spent their time flitting through galleries and buying ecstasy at pomegranate juice stands.

On the whole, I found that young people, pious and secular alike, were profoundly alienated from politics. They seemed more concerned with their immediate personal freedoms than in risking anything for political change.

Four years on, however, young Iranians have sloughed off that apathy and headed into the streets in their thousands, to wage passionate protest against an election they consider fraudulent. Young people who did not even bother to vote in 2005 are braving serious reprisals to support Mir Hossein Mousavi, the man they believe should have won power; Facebook martyrs co-opting the regime’s own ideology of martyrdom to incite even greater fury and protest.

via Young iranians have been growing steadily more angry for years | Azadeh Moaveni | World news | The Guardian .

Muy interesante artículo sobre Irán y un poco sobre el perfil de los que andan en las manifestaciones en Irán en estos momentos.