Tehran’s youth celebrate protest in the run-up to Nowruz – the Iranian New Year.

On March 21, Iranians celebrate the beginning of the New Year or Nowruz. The run-up to this festival named in the surviving text of Avesta, the sacred book of Zoroaster, was truly stormy this time.

Tehran celebrated Châhârshambe Suri, the festival of fire preceding Nowruz, on the night of March 15th amidst heavy police deployment and heightened tension.

I saw a city that seemed to have been placed in a state of emergency. It was impossible to move through it, even by a car, unnoticed by the police. Heavily armed cops with headsets surrounded the streets, parks and other places where the people could gather and protest. My companions and I were not authorised to walk through the parks or even take photographs.

A 26-year-old youth said: “I was celebrating Châhârshambe Suri with some friends in one of the main street of Tehran, Vali Asr. When the crowds began to scream ‘Death for the dictator’, the police pounced on us and beat us up. I received teargas in the eyes and was hit with a truncheon just for saying what I thought.”

Another 22-year-old youth told me he had no particular intention to participate in the demonstrations and was only standing on a bridge across the well-known roundabout Enghelâb, taking pictures of what was happening. “When I came down from the bridge, a police officer, armed to the teeth, ordered me to destroy the photos and was about to arrest me. When I showed him my father’s ID card, he said: “Luckily for you, I know your father.”

Unlucky people were conducted into the vans and brought to the police station. Faster runners or sons of officials were able to avoid arrests.

The entire day, e-mail services like Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail were inaccessible. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter, too, remained hard to access, despite the use of filter software to bypass the censorship.

The Iranian youth of today bear no resemblance to their predecessors who made the Islamic Revolution 30 years ago. Without breaking with their religious belief, they challenge the vision sought to be imposed on the nation by the Republic. They refuse to submit to the official dogma. Tehran testified to this transformation in the days before Nowruz this year.

By Caroline Azad