• Killed: at least 100
• Detained: at least 4,000
• Flashpoint: Election Fraud and Corruption
• Location and Scope: Millions of participants joined protests in at least ten major cities

The Green Movement took its name from a green sash given to Mir Hossein Mousavi by Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s two-term president and the reform movement’s first standard-bearer. It reached its height when up to 3 million peaceful demonstrators turned out on Tehran streets to protest official claims that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the 2009 presidential election in a landslide. Their simple slogan was: “Where is my vote?” The movement soon embodied the frustrated aspirations of Iran’s century-old quest for democracy and desire for peaceful change.

Over the next six months, the Green Movement evolved from a mass group of angry voters to a nation-wide force demanding the democratic rights originally sought in the 1979 revolution, rights that were hijacked by radical clerics. Every few weeks, protesters took to the streets to challenge the regime and its leadership. But by early 2010, the regime had quashed public displays of opposition. The Green Movement retreated into a period of soul-searching and regrouping.

Riot police and Basij paramilitary forces violently suppressed the demonstrations immediately following the election, which attracted more than 40,000 Iranians. Between June 2009 and February 2010, more than 30 protesters were killed and 4,000 were arrested.