Bay Area expatriates protest Iran election
Published 4:00 am, Sunday, June 14, 2009
About 100 Iranian expatriates held a protest Saturday in San Francisco's United Nations Plaza, carrying signs asking "Where Is My Vote?" as they joined in denouncing the re-election of the hard-line president that sparked rioting back home.
Samira Kashani, who lives in Mountain View, voted Friday for reformer Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former Iranian prime minister who, the Iranian Interior Ministry said, lost in a landslide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"I don't think it counted," she said of her vote for Mousavi. "It's heartbreaking. The people had this excitement. They feel cheated. I feel cheated. ... The outcome is just ridiculous.
"A lot of people had never voted before - I hate to see the government taking credit for the number of people who showed up to vote," she said.
Kashani was joined by other professionals in the protest against the election outcome.
The rally organizer, Gholam Reza Mohajeri Nejad, a pro-democratic activist living in the United States, said the election was simply not democratic. "It was cooked," he said. Now, he added, "we want to show that we support the people inside of Iran."
The reform "genie is out of the bottle. It showed the courageous energy and creativity" of the reformists, he said. "Their actions are very inspiring, although it didn't amount to victory."
While it is not clear how many expatriate Iranians voted nationwide, many jammed the only Northern California polling place, the Hilton Garden Inn in Emeryville, to cast ballots on Friday. It was one of five in the state and 41 nationwide for the estimated 414,000 Iranians living in the United States - half of whom live in the West.