Iranians Defy a Ban in a Display of Dissent

[frigidmagi]

NYTimes

[quote]Iranians defied a ban on events marking a traditional festival on Tuesday, turning an annual celebration into a show of antigovernment sentiment.

Also Tuesday, the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi appeared to challenge the authority of the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by assigning a name to the new Iranian year, a traditional prerogative of the ayatollah.

The celebration of the Feast of Fire, an ancient Iranian festival with Zoroastrian roots, has been banned every year since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and every year Iranians have celebrated anyway, setting off firecrackers, dancing in the streets and leaping over bonfires.

But this year, the opposition decided to make a political statement and urged supporters to celebrate the day. In response, the government took extra measures to ban celebrations.

Ayatollah Khamenei issued a decree over the weekend saying that the feast “has no religious basis and is harmful and must be avoided,â€