Pro-democracy demonstrators drive in convoy to Iranian Embassy

print this

Iranians living in Finland demonstrated their displeasure with the government in Tehran on Tuesday by driving in a convoy of cars from the Helsinki suburb of Itäkeskus to the Iranian Embassy in Kulosaari.
      Police did not permit them to drive right up to the embassy building.
     
Photographs of the 27-year-old student Neda Agha Soltan, who was shot dead in the post-election unrest in Tehran on Saturday, were taped to the cars' rear windows.
      She has become a symbol of the violence and the pro-democracy struggle that has erupted in Iran in the wake of the disputed Presidential elections earlier this month. The incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was returned to power, but opposition candidates have denounced the result, claiming the election was rigged.
     
Some forty to fifty Iranians took part in the Helsinki demonstration on Tuesday, drawn mostly from the young and middle-aged.
      Finland's Iranian population also demonstrated last week outside the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and Iranian feminists plan to congregate in front of Parliament today, tomorrow, and Friday in the afternoon.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finland denounces violence in Iran (23.6.2009)

Helsingin Sanomat