Iranian Students Break Down Gates Protesting Ahmadinejad
Iranian Students staged a new demonstration at Tehran University on Sunday, damaging the main gate to allow outsiders into the campus and denouncing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, news agencies reported.
The protesters chanted slogans against the president and carried banners calling for the release of three fellow students who have been held since May in a high-profile case, the Fars news agency and state-run IRNA reported.
The reports did not disclose the number of students involved. Both news agencies said that the demonstration had been called by the radical wing of the Office to Foster Unity, a reformist student group.
“The students marched on the gate and damaged it, and this allowed several non-students to enter the campus. The students chanted slogans and carried protesting placards,” IRNA reported.
“Ahmadi-Pinochet, Iran will not become Chile!” chanted the protesters, playing on the names of the Iranian president and late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Fars reported.
The students also burned a copy of Kayhan newspaper, the mouthpiece of the clerical establishment that is bitterly critical of the Iranian reformist movement, it said.
According to IRNA, anti-riot police were stationed outside the campus but did not intervene.
There has been a string of demonstrations at Tehran universities in past months as students protest against the replacement of liberal professors, pressure on activists by the authorities and the detention of three students.
The demonstration on Sunday was at least the second within a week at Tehran University after dozens of students held a similar protest on Tuesday.
Mehdi Arabshahi, a member of the central board of the Office to Foster Unity, said that 1,500 people joined the latest protest, although there was no confirmation of this figure from Iranian media.
Arabshahi told AFP that university security officials had initially shut the main gate in a bid to prevent large numbers gathering for the protest.
“But the students forced their way in and broke the gate so that others could enter.
“They protested against the detention of the students, the oppressive policies of the government and advocated rights for all Iranians,” he added, saying that the participants included liberals and ethnic Kurds.
Arabshahi said the protest lasted for more than two hours after starting at 12:00 pm (0830 GMT) and that it was peaceful.
“We are gathered here to say students are alive and are critical of wrong polices,” IRNA quoted another unnamed student as saying.
The demonstration came a day after the intelligence ministry said it had arrested an unspecified number of people using “fake student cards to hold an illegal demonstration” at Tehran University.
The timing of those arrests was not given, but it is likely that they took place before Friday which was annual students’ day in Iran.
The case of the three detained students from Tehran’s Amir Kabir University has become a major issue for the protesting students.
Detained since May, the trio were given jail sentences of up to three years in October on charges of printing anti-Islamic images in four student newspapers — accusations they vehemently deny.
Reformist leaders such as former president Mohammad Khatami have openly called for the three to be released, but hardliners have said the gravity of their crimes means they must stay behind bars.
Meanwhile, a group of Islamist students held a counter-demonstration outside the offices of the Iranian judiciary to protest against the Tehran University gathering, Fars reported.
“We condemn the demonstrations by the liberals at Tehran University, which are supported financially and morally by the opposition and the enemies,” one demonstrator told the agency.
“We are astonished that this is not prevented when they are growing bolder by the day.”
(AP)
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Think Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young will write a song for them?
Let’s help them with the lyrics, shall we:
“Four Dead In Tehran”
Nuke weapons and 12th Imam’s coming
December 10th, 2007 at 9:11 amAmydidherdad’s had enough.
This Ramadan we’ll hear the beheadings
Four (?) dead in Tehran
The youth of iran do not wish to see the sky darken with our machines of war.
Good luck with that.
December 10th, 2007 at 9:32 amThe army would have to come down on the side of the students for any good to come of this. Nothing short of civil war or an invasion will force the mullahs out of power.
The mullahs might offer Ahmadinnerjacket up as a sacrificial lamb, but that won’t change anything. The president is just a mouthpiece. The Ayatollah runs the country, along with the Revolutionary Guards, who fufill the same function as Saddam’s Republican Guards and Hitler’s SS.
While they have better training and equipment than the regular Army, the are fewer in number, and most of the population hates them. Unfortunately, the public fears them more than they hate them, at least at the moment.
The Iranian people will either overthrow the mullahs, or we’ll have to do it. In the long run, there’s no other alternatives.
The mullahs see the dissent in the West and smell weakness. There’s next to no chance they’ll back down now that they know Pelosi and Reid have their back. What they don’t seem to realize is that Pelosi and Reid can’t stop Bush or his successor from crushing them.
I’m reminded of the tale of Oedipus.
December 10th, 2007 at 1:56 pmAnd not just because Ahmadinnerjacket fucks his mother.
December 10th, 2007 at 2:59 pm