IRANIAN STUDENTS DENOUNCES JUDICIARY, CRITICIZES KHATAMI
TEHERAN 12 Dec. (IPS) About 1,000 Iranian students denounced publicly the leader-controlled Islamic Judiciary’s repression of freedoms and called for the immediate release of political prisoners.
Gathered at the Tehran Amir Kabir Technology University on the invitation of the Office for Consolidating Unity (OCU), the largest of Iranian students organisations, the students also criticised the embattled President Mohammad Khatami for his silence in face of the Judiciary’s "illegal and unconstitutional" crackdown on reformists, including students.
Speakers at the meeting, that was also attended by families of students and political dissidents incarcerated by the Judiciary on orders from the leader of the regime, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’I, without trial, told the assembly that since Mr. Khatami came to power in May 1997 with a landslide mandate from the people, including the students, more than 100 students were either languishing in jail or had been summoned to various courts.
More than sixty personalities members of the Iran Freedom Movement or belonging to Islamist-nationalist groups, many of them writers or university professors, some of the veteran opponents of the former Monarchy and pioneers promoting the Islamic revolution of 1979, have been rounded up last March and held and tortured in undisclosed prisons manned by special units of the Revolutionary Guards controlled directly by Ayatollah Khameneh’i.
The Judiciary, that serves as the leader’s political and police arms, also shut down more than 60 independent and pro-reform publications and placed behind bars a dozen of leading and influential journalists.
Mr. Ali Afshari, an outspoken leader of the OCU, arrested on April 2000 on "bundle charges" of attempt to overthrow the Islamic Republic, insulting the leader and propaganda against the regime was released three days ago on an unprecedented 2 billion Rials bail.
While in solitary confinement, Mr. Afshari was shown on the leader-controlled, State-owned Television "confessing" to wrongdoings, "revealing" that in collaboration with the IFM and Islamist-nationalists, the OCU was "debating" best ways and means to topple the Islamic Republic.
But his father and friends said the televised confessions was recorded under psychological pressures, a process worked out in collaboration between the Radio and Television, the Intelligence Ministry and the evening daily "Keyhan", a mouthpiece of hard liners following Mr. Khameneh’i.
Mr. Akbar Atri, a member of the OCU’s Central Council blasted the Judiciary for extending the temporary detention of Mr. Afshari to one year and held the body responsible for detention of students for political activities.
He also protested the new procedure approved by the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution (SCCR), curtailing drastically activities of the students on university campuses and called for more freedom for the students' political activities.
The SCCR is chaired by Hojjatoleslam Khatami, who lost a great deal of his popularity with the students after the students upraising of July 1999 after he condemned the nation-wide protest movement and approved of the massive crackdown of the students by the authorities, after Ayatollah Khameneh’I ordered police, Revolutionary Guards, the Basij volunteers and Intelligence Ministry’s special forces to "crush" the uprising, the largest ever held in Islamic Republic.
Atri criticised the performance of the Supervisory Board of the academic centres and said that the boards do not respect the students' freedom of expression.
"He complained that prolonged detention of the students has no legal basis and that the Judiciary has violated their rights", the official news agency IRNA reported.
Veteran political activists addressed the students congratulating them on the Student Day in Iran, December 7, which is reminder of the students' protest rally against a visit to Tehran of the then US vice president Richard Nixon in 1953, the pro-government IRNA added.
The students called for freedom of the political prisoners especially the students detained for political activities and called on the Parliament to uphold the democratic rights of the people by passing necessary laws in line with reforms promised by Mr. Khatami during his electoral campaign.
"Khatami's moderation is leading reforms into a dead end", the students chanted, according to the British news agency Reuters.
"The opponents of democracy and republicanism should learn a lesson from the fate of the dogmatic Taleban in Afghanistan", one speaker said to applause from the crowd.
The students chanted slogans calling for the release of all political prisoners and an end to a judicial crackdown on the independent press.
They also condemned prison sentences handed down Tuesday by the press court against students Hamid Jaafari and Mahmoud Mozhdehi of Tehran's Shahid Raja’i University, sentenced to five years and three years jail respectively for an article published in a campus journal. ENDS STUDENTS PROTEST 121201