A Call for International Support

Start of the New Academic Year in Iran marked by further Arrests and Harassment

By Anonymous student activist in Tehran

The Islamic regime in Teheran has utilized the opportunity of international concern and involvement over the country’s nuclear file to divert attention away from pressing domestic issues and has begun a systematic campaign to clamp down on all shades of internal dissent. Amongst the advocates of democracy and human rights who are being specially targeted at this time are university students, who have traditionally been the main bastion of support for the promotion of liberal democratic values in modern Iran, all of which have been officially condemned by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) hardline fundamentalist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

According to information supplied by student activists in Iran, the Islamic regime has used the cover of Ahmadinejad’s much publicized trip to Cuba and the UN, in order to try and exclude all students suspected of nourishing any dissenting opinion from altogether registering for the new academic year. On 24th September, 50 students suspected for having alternative political views to those of the ruling establishment in Teheran were officially ejected from university life and more numbers are expected to follow in the coming days. Moreover, the regime has also begun a new campaign for targeting student organizations in various university campuses. For example, in Isfahan, the body representing the student organization has been formally closed, and the same pattern is being repeated in other universities, targeting in particular, students associated with “Tahkim Vahdat” (aka “Fostering for Unity” *).

Finally, it is pertinent to remind the outside world and in particular, member states of the European Union, that while their governments are travelling an “extra mile” in order to obtain the cooperation of the IRI in reaching an acceptable compromise over the nuclear issue, the Iranian government is taking advantage of this delicate situation as well as Europe’s concerns for not upsetting the ongoing negotiations to harshly consolidate its totalitarian will on the Iranian people. Here, it is worth mentioning that the international community that people such as Ali-Akbar Mousavi-Khoini, a former member of parliament (“6th Majles”), as well as student activists such as Kheirollah Derakhshandi, Abolfazl Jahandar and Keyvan Ansari have all been arrested and held in solitary confinment without being charged. While some international human rights organization have reported on these arrests, there has been a loud silence on the part of the international community and in particular the EU3 over these arrests and the more fundamental reasons behind them.

It is hoped that the international community does not allow the IRI to use the ongoing nuclear standoff in order to extract for itself a carte blanche to further brutalize and humiliate the Iranian people, and most specially the country’s youth - men and women - who are struggling to establish a free and democratic Iran.

* The office of fostering unity, known in Farsi as Tahkim Vahdat, is the largest student organization in Iran. It was formed to support the rule of Ruhollah Khomeini, Tahkim Vahdat, has became one of the most vocal critics of the hardliners in Iran and promoted a pro-reformist stance, supporting Khatami; however after the exposal of Khatami’s allegiance to the regime and the failure of the so-called reformists, at present the organization works at promote secularism, though many of it’s governing members of are, what is referred to in Iran as nationalists religionists, meaning that they do believe in the separation of religion and state though they remain faithful Muslims.