10
news without borders
&ORLIMITEDTIMEONLY
Iran puts top reformists,
Khatami aides on trial
TEHERAN: Several aides
to former Iranian president
Mohammad Khatami and
top reformists were put on
trial yesterday on charges of
masterminding the post-elec-
tion unrest which rocked the
Islamic republic.
“The fourth session of the
revolutionary court dealing
with masterminds of the re-
cent incidents has begun,” the
Fars news agency said.
Iran has already staged
mass trials of around 140
people on offences linked to
the street violence that fol-
lowed President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad’s hotly-disputed
victory in the June election.
The court proceedings,
which opposition leaders
denounced as “show trials,”
have angered the internation-
al community and heightened
political tensions as Iran bat-
tles its worst crisis since the
1979 Islamic revolution.
In the dock were Khatami
aides such as former deputy
interior minister Mostafa Taj-
zadeh, former deputy foreign
minister Mohsen Aminzadeh,
ex-deputy economy minister
Mohsen Safaie-Farahani and
reformist activists Mohsen
Mirdamadi and Abdollah
Ramezanzadeh. Behzad Na-
bavi, a top reformist thinker
and former minister in the
post-revolution government
of Ahmadinejad’s main
election rival Mir Hossein
Mousavi, and Iranian-Ameri-
can scholar Kian Tajbakhsh
were also on trial. Saeed
Leylaz, a leading journalist
and Mohammad Ghoochani,
chief editor of Etemad Melli,
the newspaper owned by
another defeated presidential
candidate Mehdi Karroubi
were also in the dock.
Khatami, who was presi-
dent of Iran from 1997 to 2005,
is a supporter of opposition
groups who have rejected Aso
Ahmadinejad’s re-election
in what they charge was a
massively rigged poll.
Japan polls may
At previous hearings, the
defendants have included
political activists, a French
woman lecturer and two
employees of the French and
British embassies. – AFP
trigger historic change
TOKYO: Japan heads for elections on Sunday
that look set to shift the political landscape of
the world’s second largest economy, with a
centre-left party ending half a century of al-
most unbroken conservative rule.
Polls predict the opposition Democratic
Party of Japan (DPJ) led by Yukio Hatoyama
will win easily, perhaps in a landslide, against
the business-friendly Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP) of unpopular Prime Minister
Taro Aso.
The DPJ is likely to scoop up 300 of the
480 lower house seats, more than doubling
its strength, the Sankei Shimbun daily said
yesterday after a mammoth survey of 44,000
voters it conducted with Fuji Television.
If the DPJ pulls off the victory, it will make
history in a country whose electorate has been
famously risk-averse and where conservative
rule has been entrenched since it steered
Japan out of the ashes of World War II.
For over five decades, the LDP has been
part of an “iron triangle” with big business
and the state bureaucracy that presided over
Japan’s miracle run to become an economic
giant whose corporate titans remain world-
leaders.
Now, in far gloomier times, the DPJ has
promised new, more people-centred solutions
to a different set of problems – a deep sense
of economic malaise and social stagnation
Firefighters gain upper hand
against Greek inferno
ATHENS: Exhausted firefighters contained on
Monday wildfires which had been bearing down
on Athens and threatened ancient Greek land-
marks after a round-the-clock rescue effort.
But the authorities’ response to the inferno
came under criticism two years after similar
wildfires that killed 77 people.
After a weekend of devastation which saw
hundreds of residents evacuated from their
homes in the suburbs to safer areas , thousands
of hectares of woodland reduced to cinders and
fears that Athens would soon be choked by
smoke, respite finally came when heavy winds
died down.
Crews on the ground have been backed up
by water-bombers flying overhead since Friday
and their efforts finally began to pay off as the
plumes of black smoke receded although the
smell of burnt wood was all pervading.
A fire service spokesman said that while
fire crews would remain on standby in case
the flames flared up again, the situation had
been brought under control everywhere apart
from around Porto Germeno, to the west of the
capital.
Several residents refused to evacuate from
Porto Germeno in order to protect their proper-
ties.
So far casualties have been averted this
theSun | WEDNESDAY AUGUST 26 2009
Hatoyama
that have eaten away at Japan since the early
1990s.
Japan’s economy – now slowly emerging
from its latest, deepest recession – will be
eclipsed by neighbouring giant China as the
world’s number two economy as early as
next year, the International Monetary Fund
has predicted.
With low birth rates and the world’s high-
est life expectancy, Japan’s population of 127
million is rapidly greying and set to shrink by
one quarter by 2050, leaving fewer workers to
support a growing number of elderly.
The spreading fear about the future means
the LDP behemoth can no longer rely on its
contract with the electorate, in which boom-
ing companies and rich farm towns long
rewarded it with en-masse support at the
ballot box.
“We have long heard that the LDP’s one-
party dominance was about to end,” said
Tomoaki Iwai, a politics professor at Nihon
University.
“Now, it seems to be coming true... There
will be a period of confusion. It will take time.
But the system is obsolete and must change.”
For a new generation, the idea of jobs-for-
life is a distant memory. The neoliberal poli-
cies of former premier Junichiro Koizumi are
blamed for social disparities and unemploy-
ment is near a post-war high at 5.4%. – AFP
year, but more than a dozen homes have been
gutted and scores more are feared lost.
“The situation has improved, there is no
more significant active fronts in the Athens
region”, fire service spokesman Yannis Kapakis
told reporters.
More than 500 firefighters have been in-
volved in the effort to douse the fire around
Athens, bolstered by counterparts from France,
Italy, Austria, Cyprus and even Greece’s tradi-
tional rival Turkey. Around 300 troops have also
been on standby.
The fires have threatened some of Greece’s
most important archaeological sites including
the ancient Athenian fortress of Rhamnous,
near Grammatiko, where firefighters again bat-
tled on Monday to hold back the flames.
The plain of Marathon, site of the battle in
490 BC between the ancient Greeks and invad-
ing Persians, had also been engulfed in smoke.
Meanwhile fire crews managed to save the
Pantokrator Monastery, which was founded
in the mid-14th century, from being burned
down after the nuns occupying it refused to
evacuate.
Other fires brought havoc to some of the
country’s tourist retreats, including the Ionian
resort island of Zante and Skyros, an island in
the Aegean Sea. – AFP