Relations between Iranian students and the authorities are at all-time low following demonstrations against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Tehran University.
Ahmadinejad’s speech at the university on October 8 served merely to show the deep gulf that exists between his “principalist” administration and Iran’s student movement.
What was more surprising was that this level of protest was seen at the University of Tehran, traditionally home to a more measured student body, in contrast to colleges like the Amir Kabir University, the Science and Industry University, the University of Shiraz, the University of Tabriz and the Esfahan Industrial University, which attract more radical students.
The students’ fury was caused in part by an earlier speech given by Ahmadinejad while he was in the United States. Addressing students at Columbia University on September 24, the president said, “Freedoms in Iran are genuine, true freedoms. Iranian people are free. Women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom.”
A recent statement from the Office for Fostering Unity – a leading reformist student organisation – said Ahmadinejad’s remarks in New York were designed to “fool people”.
The office presents a very different picture of the state of freedom. It says 43 student organisations have been closed down, at least 130 student publications banned and more than 70 students detained in Iran since 2005, when the current administration took over. During this time, they say around 550 students have been summoned to disciplinary hearings. In short, it says, “all student institutions critical of the government have been suspended or dissolved, and there are currently almost no critical organisations at the country’s universities”.
Ahmadinejad’s claims about freedom of speech, combined with the mounting pressure exerted by the judiciary and the security services, were therefore bound to provoke anger.
The students were also enraged by what they saw as an attempt to exploit them to reinforce the remarks about freedom Ahmadinejad made in New York, and demonstrate his popularity among students. Notwithstanding the unseemly scenes during his Tehran University speech, the authorities have depicted this foray into academia, too, as a success.
The event was tightly stage-managed. The invited students in the audience were augmented by members of the Basij volunteer force and other outsider brought in to applaud the president.
A few days beforehand, the Office for Fostering Unity had written the president an open letter asking for just one of its members to be allowed in to “raise the real demands and questions of students”. The request was ignored.
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 among students right from the start. In his first year in power, 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 a “cultural revolution” at Iran’s universities.
Under pressure from authorities and facing internal divisions about how to proceed, the Office for Fostering Unity divided into two factions called Allameh and Shiraz during Mohammad Khatami’s second term in office. The radical arm favoured a complete boycott of elections, while the moderates continued to back the reformers in government.
In the last two years, however, the two factions have united in their opposition to Ahmadinejad, and more radical leaders dominated the student leadership.
Since coming to power, the government has gradually stamped out any activities it considers to be a threat. Security officials, fearing a non-violent revolution, have hit out at groups like the labour movement, women’s rights advocates and students, labelling them centres of conspiracy. Earlier this year, Minister of Intelligence Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi reiterated that Iran’s enemies were planning to use the students’ and women’s movements as the vehicle for a “soft coup”.
There is a broad range of suspect groups. In 2006, the government launched a crackdown to prevent a planned strike by Tehran bus drivers, while the Campaign for One Million Signatures, in which feminist activists petitioned for discriminatory laws against women to be scrapped, was also dealt with by tough measures.
The universities fall into the same category of hotbeds of subversion, and have been especially targeted within the last year. Non-conformist lecturers have been dismissed, student associations closed, publications banned, and a range of actions taken to muzzle student leaders.
According to the Office for Fostering Unity, more than 100 prominent lecturers have been dismissed or forced to retire in the last two years. The government has prevented dozens of students from continuing their education, cancelled the election of some university chancellors, and closed the Organisation of Iranian Graduates – the only independent body of its kind.
The authorities have accompanied their crackdown on independent student organisations with a campaign to promote institutions like the Student Basij, which is affiliated to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Meanwhile, front organisations are being formed to shadow and displace groups that are critical of the government. In July, a conference was held for Iranian students in Europe, when in fact this group has been catered to by an organisation in existence for the last 40 years.
Literature student Parisa Shokouhi told Mianeh that in the last two years, restrictions on female students’ dress and on their contacts with male students have got tougher. She claims there is clear discrimination to discourage women from going to university.
Clashes between student groups and the authorities came to a head at the beginning of May 2007, when articles insulting both Islam and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared in four student publications at Amir Kabir University, eliciting a furious response. Although staff on all four publications said the articles were forged and distanced themselves from their content, seven students including the managing editors were arrested.
Some time later, the detained students said they had been tortured to force them to make false confessions. In response, the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, delegated a special representative to investigate the torture claims.
Five months later, with three of the seven - Ahmad Ghasaban, Majid Tavakkoli and Ehsan Mansouri - still serving prison sentences, student leaders are convinced that the offending articles were planted to remove alleged ringleaders of the anti-Ahmadinejad protests at Amir Kabir University.
The Office for Fostering Unity said the students were paying the price for speaking out against the president. “The publication of these materials was a measure by Ahmadinejad’s supporters to exact revenge on the students,” it said.
The crackdown on student groups could yet prove costly for the authorities. The latest research conducted by the Iranian Student News Agency, ISNA, indicates that academics are the most respected “reference point” group in Iran, with a weighting of 29 per cent, compared with 22 per cent for schoolteachers, 16 per cent for local clerics and 14 per cent for artists.
This influential group is continuing to attack Ahmadinejad’s statements, policies and actions – ranging from his Holocaust denial, to the crackdown on social freedom and the nuclear dispute. In its recent letter addressed to the president, the Office for Fostering Unity set out 20 points of criticism of his economic, political, international, cultural and security policies.
Thus, relations between the student movement and the current Iranian authorities have deteriorated to a point where they look irreparable. Every tough measure by the president only elicits more criticism from the students, while every time they protest the government takes a harder line. The more critical students become, the more they face a crackdown.
The principalist media has joined the fray, with the Kayhan daily, for example, describing the students who protested against Ahmadinejad’s talk at Tehran University as “the enemy’s footsoldiers” and “Zionist clients”. Many such media outlets, including the Raja News website, have alleged that western intelligence services are funding the students.
Ever since the July 1999 demonstrations in Tehran against the closure of a newspaper, which ended in violence, reformist politicians been warning that student riots are a gift to those who would love a pretext to enforce a security clampdown on the universities. Member of parliament Shahriar Moshiri, who supports the students, has warned that “hidden hands are seeking to sow unrest in the academic world”.
Such warnings have also been made by figures such as ex-president Khatami and former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karroubi.
The students’ continuing confrontation with the Ahmadinejad’s administration cannot be taken to mean they automatically support the reformers. Their approach to the forthcoming elections is as yet unclear – it will depend on how two competing viewpoints within the student movement resolve themselves. One favours gradual reforms, while the other, more radical tendencies is seeking sweeping changes to the system.
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This article is an abridged and translated version of the full original text published on the Farsi pages of Mianeh, with editorial adjustments agreed with the writer made to provide clarity for English-language readers.