Reports compiled from thousands of polling stations across the country, including Tehran, Mashad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Kermanshah, Ahwaz, Tabriz, Hamedan, Ardebil, Kashan, Bushehr, Shahroud, Mahshahr, Neishabour, Zanjan, Gorgan, Karaj, Qouchan, Zabol and Khorramabad, indicate that in many polling stations the number of voters did not exceed more than 10 and was in fact less than the number of the Revolutionary Guards Corps and the State Security Forces present in the polling stations.
In Tehran's polling stations number 2, 6, 9, 42, 75, 76, 81, 171, 466, 478, 490, 491, 504, 511, 512, 531, 570, 876, 890, 897, 898, 932, 999, 1042, 1377, 1378, 1414, 1549, 1653, 2135, 2142 and 5920 the number of voters did not reach thirty.
In a clash at a polling station in the southern city of Yassouj, a member of the paramilitary Bassij was stabbed and wounded. In the northern city of Rasht, the Revolutionary Guards used violence to break up a large gathering of disenchanted people.
There were also reports that many of those who were under an assortment of pressures, including the prospects of losing their jobs if their birth certificates did not carry the election stamp, to vote, cast blank ballots.
Reports from other cities speak of an undeclared state of siege in many of the country's regions. Deploying hundreds of thousands of personnel of its five suppressive forces, the clerical regime undertook unprecedented measures. In Ardebil, northwest Iran, the State Security Forces' patrols roamed the streets of the city with Nissan cars and four armed officers. In the northern city of Qaemshahr, there were three uniformed agents for every ballot box. There were many plain-clothed agents around the cities.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
February 18, 2000
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