Iranian students lead freedom protests

By SAID RAZAVI

INSTITUTE FOR WAR & PEACE REPORTING

TEHRAN, Iran — Relations between Iranian students and the authorities are at all-time low after demonstrations against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Tehran University.

The angry response to Ahmadinejad’s appearance at the university last month was caused in part by an earlier speech he’d given while visiting the United States in September.

During an appearance at Columbia University on Sept. 24, the president said, “Freedoms in Iran are genuine, true freedoms. Iranian people are free. Women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom.”

But back home, the Office for Fostering Unity — a leading reformist student organization — presents a very different picture.

It says since 2005, when the current administration took power, 43 student organizations have been closed, at least 130 student publications banned and more than 70 students detained for criticizing the government.

In short, the group says, “all student institutions critical of the government have been suspended or dissolved, and there are currently almost no critical organizations at the country’s universities.”

Packed audience

Students were also upset by what they saw as the government’s attempt to stage-manage the president’s appearance at the university by packing the audience with his supporters, many of whom had no connection to the university.

Engineering student Reza Dargahi said the protesters were determined to thwart the propaganda display despite the high level of security, the presence of intelligence agents, and the generally intimidating atmosphere.

The president has been unpopular with many students right from the start. During his first year in office, crowds of students chanted slogans attacking Ahmadinejad and burned pictures of him when he visited the Amir Kabir University in Tehran.

In response, the president and officials at the higher education ministry have talked of the need for “cultural revolution” at Iran’s universities.

Since coming to power, the government has gradually stamped out any activities it considers to be a threat, such as the labor and women’s rights movements.

Earlier this year, Minister of Intelligence Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi reiterated the claim that Iran’s enemies were planning to use the students’ and women’s movements as the vehicle for a “soft coup.”

Universities in particular have been the target of the government’s repressive tactics. Non-conformist lecturers have been dismissed, student associations closed and their publications banned.

According to the Office for Fostering Unity, more than 100 prominent lecturers have been dismissed or forced to retire in the last two years.

Women are targets

Female students in particular say they’ve been the target of the government’s crackdown.

Parisa Shokouhi, who studies literature at Tehran University, said that in the last two years, restrictions on female students’ dress and on their contacts with male students have become stricter. She claims there is clear discrimination to discourage women from attending the university.

With its latest crackdown on the country’s institutions of higher learning, however, the government runs the risk of alienating more than just the academic elite.

A recent survey conducted by the Iranian Student News Agency found that academics are the most respected group in the country.

And it’s this group that continues to criticize the government on a wide range of issues, ranging from its Holocaust denial to the crackdown on social freedom to the nuclear standoff with the West.

So far, the government’s response to the growing criticism has been to crack down even harder.

Publications that support the government have also joined the fray. The daily Kayhan newspaper described the students who protested Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Tehran University as “the enemy’s foot-soldiers” and “Zionist clients.” Other media outlets claimed the students were funded by Western intelligence agencies.

So far, however, crackdowns and criticisms have failed to stop student protests against the government.

X Said Razavi is a journalist and former member of the Office for Fostering Unity in Iran who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization in London that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.