Riots in Britain give antagonists a chance

It isn’t often that much vilified regimes get the chance to pay back accusers in the same coin. Accusations of human rights abuses and much else by way of stifling opposition and dissent are hurled by the western world at countries in west Asia, home to many erstwhile despots. But the riots in London and a few other cities in England have given old enemy Iran the opportunity to say some things back to the UK government.

Still smarting from the harsh criticism of its actions against protestors in Tehran after the 2009 elections, during which action many were reportedly killed and incarcerated, Tehran recently asked London to accept the demands of the protesters and an international investigation into the police’s actions.

For good measure, the Iranians also asked Britain to not act in a ‘savage’ manner. That would, as many a Brit would aver, be called a bit rich. But what might have passed off as a bit of perverse payback pot-shots at an old antagonist went into the realm of patchwork propaganda when it was revealed that pictures of the riots and the police action published by sections of the Iranian media weren’t quite recent.

To buttress the ‘uprising of the oppressed’ thesis these sections were putting out as analysis of the unrest in Britain, they published pictures from a football riot, the 1984 miners’ strike, the Notting Hill carnival and even, it seems, a picture taken in Chile.

Perhaps, the adage about the masses believing what you tell them was at work. But what compounded matters was that a reputed British newspaper which printed the story about the wrong pictures itself had to amend the article as an accompanying link to a picture of London’s police in action against protestors suggested it was taken in Washington! Truly, we live in editorially interesting times.