Moderate Cleric Hassan Rouhani Wins Iran’s Election

In a result that many did not expect, a moderate reformist has won Iran's presidential election and has started pundits speculating as to why the reigning mullahs did not try to fix the election and have it go to one of their hand picked cronies.  Some speculate that they believe they can control Rouhani (pictured at left) and the country regardless of who holds the presidency.  Others wonder if the mullahs feared a reprise of the 2009 violence if they moved to stifle.  The larger lesson is that the Iranian people should not be seen as holding identical views and beliefs as their murderous dictators who have ruled since the over throw of the Shah back in 1979.   The larger lesson is that most people be they Christian, Muslim, Hindu, gay or straight all want largely the same thing: security and good health for their families, a better future for their children, the freedom to lead their lives as the wish and to be simply left alone.  Its the religious fundamentalists time and time again who bear the responsibility for depriving the rest of us these simple wants and desires.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post on the surprise in Iran:

TEHRAN — Hassan Rouhani, a moderate Shiite cleric known as one of Iran’s leading foreign policy experts, has won the election to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Islamic Republic’s next president, Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar announced Saturday evening.

With results from all the precincts in, Rouhani had won 50.7 percent of the votes, avoiding a runoff, Mohammad-Najjar said.

The mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, came a distant second, with 16.6 percent of the vote. Saeed Jalili, Iran’s hard-line nuclear negotiator, came third with 11.4 percent. A handful of other conservative candidates fared poorly.

After a surge of support in the final week of campaigning from Iranians who did not plan to vote, Rouhani won a surprising decisive majority in a field of six candidates considered loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Rouhani took a majority of the votes, which is already being viewed as a repudiation of not only the Ahmadinejad years but also the hold conservatives have held over Iranian politics since 2005.   Rouhani has pledged to bridge the divides between conservatives and reformists, and if his past record is any indication, he is well positioned to do so.

With the backing of former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Rouhani will have a powerful mandate to improve Iran’s international relations and attempt to negotiate a settlement of Iran’s nuclear activities.

Rouhani has since been a harsh critic of Ahmadinejad’s economic and foreign policy.   In Washington, the White House responded to the election of Rouhani by congratulating the Iranian people “for their participation in the political process, and their courage in making their voices heard,” and offering to hold talks with the new Iranian government over its nuclear program.

Ray Takeyh, a former State Department adviser and Middle East expert, said the results probably “even surprised Rouhani,” who appears to have been an unexpected beneficiary of pent-up resentments among Iranians after years of political repression and the recent economic hardships brought on by Western sanctions.

“This was supposed to be a well-regulated, well-crafted election, and then the wheels came off,” Takeyh said. “It appears that the leadership miscalculated on Rouhani’s appeal, and also miscalculated on the ineptness of its preferred candidates and the impact of the divisions among the conservative coalition.”

Rouhani will likely bring with him a cadre of more moderate diplomats, technocrats and nuclear negotiators who favor a more pragmatic foreign policy, said Trita Parsi, author of “A Single Roll of the Dice,” a book on the Obama administration’s dealings with Iran.  

A Bizarre Rick Santorum Anti--Obama Ad

As most readers likely realize if they've visited this blog very often, in my opinion, Rick "Frothy Mix" Santorum is more than a bit insane and plagued with deep seated pychological issues to boot. Hence, it should come as no surprise that Santorum has a new You Tube ad that is really bizarre - just like Frothy Mix himself. Andy Towle has a good description of the ad which is posted below:

Entitled Obamaville, it presents a horror-show vision of America in the dread year 2014. In Obamaville the streets are empty, and scary-looking crows are everywhere. Children's shoes are discarded in the dirt -- and where are the children? They're gone! Look at the abandoned playgrounds, the equipment therein manipulated by naught but the lonely wind. (Or is it something more sinister?) This is 28 Days Later, reimagined in the rustbelt. Lookit the little lonesome baby, squirming in what might be a bathtub. Lookit the psychotic smiling nurse wearing too much lipstick, saying "Shhhhhhh" -- is she euthanizing us? Is that horrible nurse lady euthanizing the American Dream? And see the man who appears to be blowing his brains out with a gasoline pump.

The narrator intones: "A rogue nation, and sworn American enemy, has become a nuclear threat." As the narrator says "sworn American enemy," Ahmadinejad's face is replaced for just an instant with Barack Obama's. They are one and the same, goes the implication; brother jihadis beneath the skin.

The ad's got no ideas, no arguments, no obvious references to the actual objective reality inhabited by actual citizens in the actual world. Whoever made it doesn't think the American people are smart enough to be swayed by such things. Rather, the ad's an appeal for the votes of idiots and paranoiacs -- which, you'd think, would be galling to the potential Santorumites at whom it's aimed.

It may sometimes be difficult to discern who the good guys are in American politics, but the really bad guys are never hard to locate. They're the ones who make ads like this:

Iran Protests Spread in Heartland

As far too many Americans seem to be embracing the dumbing down of the populace favored by the Christianists - who need an ignorant populace to further their theocratic goals - and focus on moronic reality TV, Tiger Woods' moral lapse, what same sex couples do in the privacy of their bedrooms, etc., rather than significant current events and basis knowledge such as geography, critical developments continue to be playing out in Iran. Depending upon which side wins in the continuing protests, the entire calculus of the Middle East could change radically. Personally, I do not understand the mind set or the narrow world view that allows citizens to be so oblivious of important events overseas. While many Americans view Iran as a backward nation of religious extremists, the reality is that the nation has a long cultural history that is more than 10 times the age of that of the USA. I hope the protests lead to a succesful overthrow of the current government and a true democracy. The Los Angeles Times has a story on the continuing protests in Iran which I hope in time may topple the theocratic dictatorship that currently rules that nation. Here are some highlights:

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Large-scale protests spread in central Iranian cities Wednesday, offering the starkest evidence yet that the opposition movement that emerged from the disputed June presidential election has expanded beyond its base of mostly young, educated Tehran residents to at least some segments of the country's pious heartland.
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Demonstrations took place in Esfahan, a provincial capital and Iran's cultural center, and nearby Najafabad, the birthplace and hometown of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, whose death Saturday triggered the latest round of confrontations between the opposition movement and the government.
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Iranian authorities are clearly alarmed by the spread of the protests. Mojtaba Zolnour, a mid-ranking cleric serving as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the elite and powerful Revolutionary Guard, acknowledged widespread unrest around the country.
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There were also reports Wednesday of protests breaking out on university campuses in Tehran and the eastern city of Mashhad, Iran's second largest, and a violent clash broke out in the southern city of Sirjan over the execution of two men accused of criminal activity. Tehran's mass postelection protests, which were crushed by authorities, drew Iranians from all walks of life.
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"What has happened was a religious reaction out of devotion and conviction" to Montazeri, he said. "While on the surface the unrest has no relation with the political agenda of the green [opposition] movement, more deeply it is part and parcel of the same social, political and economic dissatisfaction, and if it continues, it will become more a political than merely a religious backlash." "The limitation imposed on the reform movement by the government made it into a social movement which has become viable and gained momentum," he said.

Iran Tries to Suppress Rape Allegations

It is very hard to believe that the accusations that detained protesters were in some cases raped and sodomized are untrue. These violent acts were no doubt one by some of the same thugs that beat protesters to death and/or shot them in cold blood. What better way to demean and humiliate detainees that to sexually violate them. And then there's the fact that like all religious based tyrants, the current Islamic leaders lie without a second thought and somehow expect that thinking people will buy their bullshit. My rule of thumb is that the louder people protest that fact based allegations are untrue, the more one knows that they are knowingly lying. One can only hope that the accusations will continue and that pressure will build to force and investigation that will expose the crimes of the ruling dictators. Here are some highlights from the New York Times on the ongoing issue:

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Iran’s clerical leadership on Friday stepped up a campaign to silence opposition claims that protesters had been raped in prison, with prayer leaders in at least three major cities denouncing the accusations and their chief sponsor.

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The accusations of rape — usually a taboo subject in Iran — have multiplied and provoked strong reactions in the days since a reformist cleric and presidential candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, broached the subject last weekend. His allegations added fuel to an already volatile debate about prison abuse in the wake of Iran’s disputed June 12 election.

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Also on Friday, a group of reformist former lawmakers issued an extraordinary statement on opposition Web sites in which they denounced the government’s harsh tactics and appealed to a powerful state body to investigate the qualifications of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Although it was not clear who had endorsed the statement, or even if all of the lawmakers were in the country, it appeared to be the most direct challenge to the supreme leader’s authority yet in the unrest following the election.

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But Mr. Karroubi appeared to be undaunted, and he pressed ahead with more claims of jailhouse sexual abuse in a statement posted on his party’s Web site late Thursday. He said he had received testimony from former prisoners that they had seen other detainees “forced to go naked, crawling on their hands and knees like animals, with prison guards riding on their backs.” Others told of watching as fellow prisoners guilty only of marching and chanting slogans were beaten to death, Mr. Karroubi said.

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The former lawmakers praised Mr. Karroubi for publicizing the rape accusations and angrily dismissed the mass trial of reformists now under way as a Stalinesque show trial. They also echoed opposition complaints about the brutality of the crackdown that followed the protests.

Iran Protests: Phase 2

Like many political and news junkies, I continue to follow the ongoing developments in Iran and hope they will lead to the eventual overthrow of the current Islamic dictatorship and its replacement by a truly democratic government that allows for religious freedoms. As yet, it is still difficult to know where things will possibly lead, but it does seem that there might be a slow but steady undercurrent brewing that may yet build renewed steam and lead to change. A democratic Iran not dominated by extremist Islamic clerics would change the whole political and economic game in the Middle East. It could well undermine support for the Taliban and other Islamic fundamentalist extremists and lead to pressure for reform and increased freedoms in other Islamic countries. Time has article that looks at the unfolding events. Here are some highlights:

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Phase 2 has begun. Six weeks after millions took to the streets to protest Iran's presidential election, their uprising has morphed into a feistier, more imaginative and potentially enduring campaign. The second phase plays out in a boycott of goods advertised on state-controlled television. Just try buying a certain brand of dairy product, an Iranian human-rights activist told me, and the person behind you in line is likely to whisper, "Don't buy that. It's from an advertiser."

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It includes calls to switch on every electric appliance in the house just before the evening TV news to trip up Tehran's grid. It features quickie "blitz" street demonstrations, lasting just long enough to chant "Death to the dictator!" several times but short enough to evade security forces. It involves identifying paramilitary Basij vigilantes linked to the crackdown and putting marks in green — the opposition color — or pictures of protest victims in front of their homes. It is scribbled antiregime slogans on money. And it is defiant drivers honking horns, flashing headlights and waving V signs at security forces.

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[T]heir variety and scope indicate that Iran's uprising is not a passing phenomenon like the student protests of 1999, which were quickly quashed. This time, Iranians are rising above their fears. Although embryonic, today's public resolve is reminiscent of civil disobedience in colonial India before independence or in the American Deep South in the 1960s. Mohandas Gandhi once mused that "even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled." That quotation is now popular on Iranian websites.

The current uprising is nowhere near as widespread as that of 1979. Yet the activism is creating a new political space in Iran. The public is defining its own agenda, with Rafsanjani, Mousavi and other opposition figures responding to sentiment on the street rather than directing it. After meeting on July 20 with the families of people detained following the election, Mousavi warned the power structure, "You are facing something new: an awakened nation, a nation that has been born again and is here to defend its achievements." As Iran's second phase of protests takes shape, the regime's future may depend on whether it heeds that warning.

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I continue to hope that the protesters succeed and I will continue showing the green color of the protesters on this blog as a sign of support. Fareed Zakaria has an article in Newsweek that also looks at the situation in Iran and cautions that the U.S. should do nothing for the time being and allow the undercurrent of protest to grow.

Leading Iranian Clerics Defy Ayatollah

I continue to follow events in Iran with the hope that ultimately the reformists will prevail. The Islamic extremist government has shown it self to be not only dishonest but also incredible brutal. All too typically, the forces of brutality are the ones who claim to have God/Allah on their side when in fact it's the exact opposite. Fortunately, some leading clerics are gaining some backbone and resisting the stealing of the election. It is hard to say where this will lead, but it is nonetheless encouraging. The motivation for this move is unclear, although it may be a simple recognition that siding with the people is the safer approach in the longer term. Here are some highlights from the New York Times:

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The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

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A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult — if not impossible.

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“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. “Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei.”

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The announcement came on a day when Mr. Moussavi released documents detailing a campaign of fraud by the current president’s supporters, and as a close associate of the supreme leader called Mr. Moussavi and former President Mohammad Khatami “foreign agents,” saying they should be treated as criminals.

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The documents, published on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site, accused supporters of the president of printing more than 20 million extra ballots before the vote and handing out cash bonuses to voters.

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The clerics’ decision to speak up again is not itself a turning point and could fizzle under pressure from the state, which has continued to threaten its critics. Some seminaries in Qum rely on the government for funds, and Ayatollah Khamenei and the man he has declared the winner of the election, incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have powerful backers there.

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But the association’s latest statement does help Mr. Moussavi, Mr. Khatami and a former speaker of Parliament, Mehdi Karroubi, who have been the most vocal in calling the election illegitimate and who, in their attempts to force change, have been hindered by the jailing of influential backers.

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Perhaps more threatening to the supreme leader, the committee called on other clerics to join the fight against the government’s refusal to adequately reconsider the charges of voter fraud. The committee invoked powerful imagery, comparing the 20 protesters killed during demonstrations with the martyrs who died in the early days of the revolution and the war with Iraq, asking other clerics to save what it called “the dignity that was earned with the blood of tens of thousands of martyrs.”

Iran election: Faces of the Dead and Detained

I continue to hope that with time the Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship in Iran will be overthrow. Not only is the current regime the enemy of democracy, but it is also the enemy of LGBT individuals worldwide and is responsible for the execution of countless gays in Iran. Meanwhile, the stories of brutality and inhumanity on the part of the ruling dictatorship and its thugs continue to trickle out to the world. The UK's Guardian is endeavoring to bring forth the stories of those killed and detained through an interactive page. As the Guardian notes:

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We want to put a face to each of those hundreds - possibly thousands - killed or arrested since the Iranian election.

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On its website, the Guardian is working to identify the victims of the regime's brutality and is posting photos where available of the dead and detained and biographical information if known. it is very moving and it sickens me to see the faces of young, vibrant Iranians who gave their lives and appear to be the exact opposite of what the Bush/Cheney regime and their Christianist allies would have the public believe.

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All of us need to keep alive the stories of these brave individuals who risked their lives - and lost them in many cases - so that change could occur.

Iran Bans Election Protest Soccer Players

In a demonstration of just how petty and childishly vindictive the current Iranian Islamic government can be, the Telegraph is reporting that four members of Iran's World Cup players – Ali Karimi, 31 (pictured above), Mehdi Mahdavikia, 32, Hosein Ka'abi, 24 and Vahid Hashemian, 32 – have been "retired" from the sport after their gesture against the rigged election in last Wednesday's match against South Korea in Seoul. I sincerely hope that these men remain safe in to Iran, although personally, I might have thought twice about returning at least at the present time. Here are some highlights:

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Their gesture attracted worldwide comment and drew the attention of football fans to Iran's political turmoil. Now the country's authorities have taken revenge by imposing life bans on players who sported green wristbands in a recent World Cup match in protest against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election.

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According to the pro-government newspaper Iran, four players – Ali Karimi, 31, Mehdi Mahdavikia, 32, Hosein Ka'abi, 24 and Vahid Hashemian, 32 – have been "retired" from the sport after their gesture in last Wednesday's match against South Korea in Seoul.

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Most of the players obeyed instructions to remove the armwear at half-time, but Mahdavikia wore his green captain's armband for the entire match. The four are also said to have been banned from giving media interviews.

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The fate of the other two players who wore the wristbands is unknown. None of the team members were given back their passports upon returning to Tehran after the match, which ended in a 1-1 draw – a result that ended Iran's hopes of qualifying for next year's tournament.

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Iran's hardline media have since linked the protest to the arrest on Saturday of Mohsen Safayi Farahani, who headed the country's football governing body under the former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami. He is one of several dozen opposition politicians, intellectuals and journalists to have been detained.

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My thoughts and prayers will be with these brave men who dared to tell the world their views.

More Thoughts on Iran

It is truly difficult to know what is really happening in Iran, but it truly appears that the Islamic dictatorship has unleashed much more than it bargained for in the apparent shameless rigging of the vote the week before last. Where it all will lead no one knows either here in the USA or in Iran. My thoughts and prayers go out to those demonstrating and demanding true democracy as opposed to what Iran has suffered under since 1979. Some of the best coverage is via Andrew Sullivan's blog which is demonstrating daily how the old media formula cannot deliver constantly updated information and analysis. As Andrew notes via a New Yorker article that quotes his blog, the big question is when and if the military begins to shift it's support to those in the streets:

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The footage from Tehran today looks like urban warfare. Gone are the massive crowds. Instead we see bands of civilians under attack from bands of thugs, gunshots, flames, thin crowds chased through side streets. If the authorities succeed in keeping demonstrators dispersed and on the run, they could swiftly seize the upper hand. The Web site Tehran Bureau is reporting forty dead and more than two hundred wounded. The victims are seeking aid in foreign embassies rather than hospitals, according to Twitter reports from Tehran.

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There are reports that those demonstrators who came out today planned, via the Internet, to bring Korans onto the streets, and to sit and read from them when attacked by militiamen. Such tactics are in keeping with these demonstrators’ use of slogans and imagery taken from religion and from the Islamic Revolution of 1979—shouting “Allahu Akbar” from the rooftops, organizing demonstrations as public memorials for the dead, refusing (for the most part, at least until today) to attack Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei by name or to call for an end to theocratic rule. In effect, they are saying, We are not against the revolution or against the Islamic Republic. We are its defenders from desecration. Having the former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi for a leader helps in this regard, because of his close historic association with the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

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I think there is still a battle being waged for the hearts and minds of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij. Successful nonviolent movements in other countries have depended on the cooptation of the rank and file in the armed forces; . . . It is one thing to unleash brutal force on crowds that insult the Leader or Islam. That was how the members of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij could defend their assault on demonstrators at Tehran University in 1999. But now, in the name of Ahmadinejad’s controversial presidency, they are being asked to violently disperse fellow Iranians who are chanting religious slogans, carrying Korans, and calling for the lawful counting of their votes. Whether or not the rumors of splits at the top of the Revolutionary Guards’ hierarchy are true, the rank and file is not necessarily monolithic.

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If the opposition does indeed hope to appeal to the common humanity of its attackers, however, today’s events have not been particularly encouraging. Reports on Andrew Sullivan’s indispensable blog show unremitting violence, and a turn toward more frankly oppositional slogans on the part of the demonstrators.

I'm Here, President Ahmadinejad

This is an interesting and brave story in today's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/28/AR2007092801322.html) told by a 25 year old gay Iranian, further adding to Ahmadinejad's ridiculous claim that there are no gays in Iran. The writer wisely is identified only by his first name, Amir. Here are some highlights:

I'm one of those people Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says don't exist. I'm a 25-year-old Iranian, and I'm gay. I live in Tehran with my parents and younger brother and am studying to be a computer software engineer. I've known that I was different from my brother and other boys for as long as I can remember.

I was born in 1982, two years after the start of the Iran-Iraq War, and when I was growing up, most boys loved to play with toy guns, pretending to be soldiers in the war. I liked painting, and playing with dolls. My brother preferred to play with the other boys, so most of the time I was lonely.

I was 16 when I first realized that I was sexually attracted to some of the boys in my high school classes. I had no idea what I could do with that feeling. All I knew about homosexuals were the jokes and negative stories that people told about them. I thought a homosexual was someone who sexually abused children -- until I saw the word "homosexual" for the first time in an English encyclopedia, and found a definition of myself.

Around that time [2000], Iranian society became more open under President Mohammad Khatami's reformist government. The Internet became common, and everybody started talking about issues they couldn't even have thought about before. Until then, the gay world had been underground and secret. Under the Islamic Republic, gays could face the death penalty; they could also lose their jobs and family support. Meetings and parties took place only in the most trusted private homes. Heterosexuals were almost never seen at these gatherings. Even fellow gays were only slowly accepted. It could take years for a homosexual to become known and trusted. Most older gays were married and even had children, and their family and friends had no idea of their sexuality.

There was a handful of gathering places for outcast homosexuals in Tehran, people who couldn't hide their sexuality and had lost their jobs, or people whose families had disowned them, and who had turned to selling sex for money. Those places were always being attacked by the paramilitaries.

My generation was the first to start the coming-out process. I decided to come out when I was 20. I thought that if I just talked to my parents about it, they would accept my reasoning. I was totally wrong. Their reaction was horrible. They started to restrict me -- I couldn't use the phone or invite any of my friends over, and they cut back on financial support. Part of their reaction was religious; part was their concern that I couldn't survive as a homosexual in Iran. They were also ashamed to tell the rest of our family and wanted to see me married to a woman. We argued constantly; they insisted that I wasn't gay, that I only thought I was. It took me years to calm them down, but over time, they lost any hope of changing me, and they started to change themselves. Now they accept that I'm gay, but they're not happy about it.

But we weren't surprised by Ahmadinejad's comments about gays at Columbia University. What else could he say? We stone homosexuals in Iran because that's what God wants? It was a joke, but he gave the only answer he could. I wish our president could learn to respect gays instead of denying us. But I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, my only response to his remarks is this: Whatever he says, Ahmadinejad can't change the fact that we exist.

Amir is an activist in Tehran whose name is being withheld for his safety.

IRAN'S PRES SCRUBS GAYS FROM SITE

Personally, I find President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be a very loathe some individual. Obviously, from this PageOne Q story (http://pageoneq.com/news/2007/Irans_President_scrubs_reference_to_gays_in_speech_fr_0925.html), he does not get it that the media in the rest of the world is not as easily intimidated and controled in his country. His statement that gays do not exist in Iran simply shows him to be a delusional idiot. Nowadays with the Internet, Iran can scrub its official site, but the truth can and will get out. That was a lesson learned by the former Soviet Union and which is being learned by China (Chimperator Bush still has not learned the lesson). Every time a means is found to block the flow of the truth, creative individuals will find a way around it. Here are highlights from the story:

The official website of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has removed a portion of a transcript of his speech yesterday at Columbia University. In the scrubbed section, part of a question and answer period, Ahmadinejad said there are no homosexuals in Iran. In a statement released by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission the organization noted that the comments had been removed from the Persian language version of the site, but left in the English transcription of the speech. Following an inquiry by PageOneQ made to the Iranian embassy, the entire question and answer period has been removed from the site.

In response to a question on the execution of gays in Iran, Ahmadinejad said there were no homosexuals in his country. "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country," he said. Audience members booed and howled at the guest. "In Iran we do not have this phenomenon, I don't know who has told you that we have it," he added.

According to IGLHRC, no Persian language papers have reported on the remarks. "To date, not a single Persian-language media outlet in Iran - including Iran's official news agency, IRNA, and the semi-independent news agencies, ISNA, Mehrrnews and Farsnews, and the Wednesday morning newspapers - has reported on the President's comments," said IGLHRC's statement.