Criticism from Mousavi and Rahnavard's Children on Government's 'Indifference' to Lifting House Arrest

The children of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard implicitly criticized the 'silence', 'indifference', and 'abandonment of responsibility' by government officials regarding the lifting of house arrest for the leaders of the 'Green Movement' in a letter they published. The full text of the letter from Koukb, Zahra, and Narges Mousavi, addressed to 'history', was published on the 'Kalemeh' website on Tuesday, October 11. They wrote that despite the 'commitments and duties' of the 'government officials' regarding the house arrest, they have chosen to ignore and remain silent in the face of their written and oral reports about the 'damaging aspects of the house arrest'. Hassan Rouhani, the President during the eleventh government, repeatedly promised during the 2013 presidential election campaign that he would pursue the lifting of the house arrest of the 'Green Movement' leaders if he won the election. The failure to fulfill this promise has prompted reactions from the families of Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, with Hossein Karroubi also mentioning the 'failure' of the President to lift the house arrest of the 'Green Movement' leaders. On August 8 of this year, Hossein Karroubi deemed the lifting of the house arrest of the leaders of the protests following the 2009 presidential election as 'unlikely', stating that the ruling system would not grant this 'privilege' to Hassan Rouhani. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran, also responded to these protests by stating that the government 'cannot do anything' regarding the lifting of the house arrest and should not be expected to do so. Mir Hossein Mousavi, Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karroubi have been under house arrest without trial since February 2011, and in the sixth year of their parents' house arrest, Mousavi's daughters published a letter reflecting on the events of these years. They wrote that they have been 'longing' for their parents who are 'trapped in an unknown end due to standing by their beliefs'. The Mousavi and Rahnavard daughters added that they consider Iran to be 'full of loneliness' without the 'free' presence of their parents, describing every inch of it as a 'land of exile' when their parents have been taken captive. The letter also recounts the general events of the six years of house arrest, mentioning the 'bitterness', 'limitations', 'insults', 'lies', and 'hatred' directed against Mousavi and his family. The Mousavi daughters attributed their parents' illnesses to the 'house arrest' and criticized the 'unmanliness and slanders' against their parents by 'a group of powerful individuals who appear to be supporters of the revolution'. They stated that 'we must look at it as Ashura, every day is Ashura, and every land is Karbala, even if part of it is the Pasteur area in a hundred-year-old house on the verge of collapsing from age.' The Mousavi children wrote that spending 'six Ashura-like years behind tall walls' will be recorded in history, just as 'history will never forget the injustices that were done to Hussein and his family in all moments and reasons for that rightful journey and its reasons.'