IRANIAN ISLAMIC JUDICIARY CONTINUE CRACKDOWN ON STUDENTS MAGAZINES
TEHRAN, First of July (IPS) The Iranian Islamic Judiciary led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenehe'i, the leader of the Islamic Republic widened Sunday its crackdown on students and campus publications, sending to prison three students, charged for having "offended" Mehdi, the Sh’ia Muslim’s twelfth and last imam.
According to the independent Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), Mr. Morteza Taqi-poor, Editor of the campus magazine "Faryad" (Cry), Mr. Roozbeh Shafe’i and Mohammad Reza Shiravand, columnists, had been arrested on orders from the Islamic revolution tribunal of Tehran that also banned the publication.
Observers said after having closed almost all independent and reformist publications and jailed a dozen of influential and outspoken journalists, Mr. Khamenehe'i has now turned his wrath to the students and campus bulletins and publications, many of them discussing openly sensitive religious fundaments and political issues, like the hejab, the Islamic dress women are forced to wear, the inequality and segregation imposed on women in Islamic societies as well as the role, the powers, the position and the existence of the valye faqih, or a Tutor.
Last week, a local press court in central city of Yazd ordered the imprisonment of two reformist students, Ali Fallah and Babak Ghani-poor, in connection with undisclosed press activities.
Last month, Tehran press court had sentenced to prison Mr. Mehdi Aminizadeh and Reza Nadimi, both with the banned campus magazine "Kavir" (Desert), accused of the publication of a "blasphemous" article in the magazine.
Mr. Aminizadeh has been released on a 50 million rials ($6,250) bail, the official news agency IRNA said, adding that two other students, one acting as the executive Editor and the other who wrote the offending article are in jail.
In November 1999, Tehran Press Court jailed three students for publishing a satirical play in their college magazine called "Mowj" (Wave).
Titled "Exams At the Time of Resurrection", the play describes a wondering Mehdi who has come back from his hiding to restore justice on earth and try to enrol a young Basiji, or volunteer who is about to pass his university exams.
Under pressures from radical clerics who denounced the play as "blasphemous", a court banned the bulletin and sent the authors of the play, Mohammad-Reza Namnabati, Abbas Nemati and Alireza Aqa’i to three years each years to six months imprisonment, but were released after some times, pardoned by Mr. Khamenehe'i.
Meanwhile, in a rare move, family members of the detained opposition liberals and intellectuals have pleaded to the Iranian nation for transfer of the detainees from solitary confinement to jails for common law and criminals, IRNA reported Sunday.
Ordered by the leader, the Islamic revolution courts raided houses and offices of hundreds of Islamist-nationalist and Iran Freedom Movement (IFM) members days before and after the Iranian New Year, starting on 21 of March, accused of "plots to topple the Islamic Republic".
"We had firstly referred to the (hardline) revolutionary court for clarification on the status of our relatives, but we were turned away with insult, humiliation and even jail threat", IRNA quoted from the letter, adding, "That's why we have resorted to the Iranian nation."
"Based on the telephone calls and visits with the detainees, we disclaim remarks by (Tehran's Revolutionary Court Chief Ali) Mobasheri who said they are not in individual cell and rather enjoying furnished rooms (!)" it said.
"Subjecting our family members to psychological torture and their physical diseases due to lack of fresh air for them to breathe bear enough witness to the fact that they are held in solitary cell under harsh conditions", it added.
About 60 dissidents, mostly IFMIs, are reported to be in "temporary solitary confinement" and subjected to physical and psychological tortures, according to their families. ENDS STUDENTS PUBLICATIONS CRACKDOWN 1701