Translation of a report found on Gozareshgaran.
Received: Report of eyewitness observations from parts of Tehran demonstrations on Feb. 14, 2011
by: Anonymous
Hello, Dear Friends,
Once again, we made it back home in one piece. I got home at eight, but I jumped on the back of a motorbike; the guy was a decent man. He's a courier biker in the south of Tehran. He said he was just coming from Navaab. "Southern neighborhoods are locked up." He said that Navaab was set on fire by the youth, and they had given a good beating to some of the plainclothes guys. And then he said something interesting about our kids. He said they really defended their honor. That was interesting.
All in all, some people and we were with them, joined up with others around Jamal-zaadeh Eskandari, and we took to the middle of the street and started shouting slogans. The slogans were basically, 'Death to the dictator!', 'Mobarak, Ben-Ali, next is Seyed Ali [Khamenei]!', 'Free political prisoners!' ...
It was basically a lot of running away and trying not to get caught. If our crowd got bigger anywhere, they would start chasing us and throwing tear gas. Even in small side streets and alleys, all the way from Enghelaab to about Azaadi, were filled with tear gas. And then a woman, around Eskandari, approached our crowd from the west and started to shout slogans. She was about 60 years old, and the whole crowd started following her. She became the leader of the demonstration. And another thing was, all the streets leading to Azaadi St., like North and South Jamal-zaadeh, were mostly on fire and filled with people, who were being forced back by tear gas from pouring onto major streets. Also, I have to say this emotional thing. Naahid and I got very emotional at times, with tears in our eyes, from the masses of the youth who were there.
And like one of our friends said, we also passed through the 'democracy hole'. In Yaadgaar some 14, 15 year old Basiji kids were turning people back saying we couldn't go any further, and were directing people south-bound. So, people, men, women, old and young, just jumped over the guard rail and then from a hole that didn't have a bar went to the other side of the street and continued on. My friend called that little hole the 'democracy hole', through which people for the time being are making their passage.
After it got dark, people were saying that some people had gone to Vanak, some to Arya-shahr and Veela to shout slogans. And another thing was that when people would gather in lines for BRT buses, they would throw tear gas canisters to disperse people, and then after about an hour of this, they completely stopped the bus traffic, to free up the bus lanes for the coming and going of their own motorized units. And some young women who the Basijis were trying to pull down from some buses to be arrested were freed by the people who didn't allow them to arrest the youth, and kept at the Basijis who realized that beating up the kid was of no use and gave up on arresting him, so that they could attack the other protesters.
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