STUDENTS WARNS KHAMENEH'I OF COUNTER-REVOLUTION, FACING SHAH'S FATE

By Safa Haeri, IPS Editor

PARIS- 2nd Mar. (IPS)    In an unprecedented warning to the leader of the Islamic Republic, the Office of Consolidating Unity (OCU), Iran's largest students organisations tell Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i either he reins the Judiciary and stop this power harassing students and reformists or the he might face the same fate as the revolution reserved to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Iranian Monarch.

Observers said the statement is the strongest and the most explicit ever warnings issued by the disenchanted Iranian students against the leaders of the Islamic Republic.

"Many years ago, the late Mehdi Bazargan told Mohammad Reza Pahlavi we are the last generation talking to you with this language. To those who are in charge of the interests of the nation, we remind them that reforms are the last remedy against the separation of generations. If the conservatives, with their all out pressures and illegal actions stop the process, the result is known in advance. Let's hope it does not happens", the statement warned Mr. Khameneh'i.

Political analysts said the statement, published Thursday by the Iranian Students News Agency "ISNA" was also an open answer to the leaders speech made three days ago at the Amir Kabir Technical University, defending the Judiciary's repression against reformists and reform movement and placing this power he personally leads above the two others, a clear departure from the policy of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that would always consider the Legislative as the most important of the regime's three powers.

"Placed between mounting demands from its base for bold action and increasing pressures and restrictions from the Islamic Judiciary, the OCU had to adopt a stronger attitude and a firmer tone", observed Mr. Ahmad Salamatian, a Paris-based political analyst.

The statement accuses the Judiciary to obtain forced confessions from political prisoners in order to better silence them. "Some prisoners like Mr. (Ezzatollah) Sahabi, and (Ali) Afshari have been taken to secret places and forced to confess that reformists are after the downfall of the regime", the Tehran branch of the OCU disclosed, protesting also to the arrest of Mrs. Fariba Davudi-Mohajer, a reformist journalist brutalised by Judiciary agents who had come to arrest her.

In his speech at the Amir Kabir University, Mr. Khameneh'i had likened reformist journalists and intellectuals to apostates and enemies of God, a sin that is punished by death in the Islamic Republic.

"It seems that what thugs failed to achieve yesterday with their clubs, judges are to obtain with their pens", the statement pointed out, describing as "utterly politic" the attitude of the Judiciary with member of the press and reformists since last April, the start of the unprecedented clampdown on the reformist and independent press, ordered by Ayatollah Khameneh'i.

"Reformism has become such a crime that high or low-ranking, minister or deputy, whoever that commits it would never be pardoned for", the students said, warning: "It is under such conditions that the Iranian people have lost its confidence to the Judiciary".

According to Mr. Ebrahim Sheykh, a member of the OCU's Executive Bureau, faced with mounting pressures from the Judiciary, the arrest of some of its members, the bundle closure of newspapers and silencing of journalists and reformists by the Judiciary, the Office had no other choice but make clear its reading of the situation in the running off to the next presidential elections of June 1980.

However, he reiterated that students would do "nothing more nor special" if not heard. "We think that if the present situation continue, the regime would loose people's confidence and smaller number would take part in future elections and this, for a regime that prides itself for the backing of the people, is a very bitter pill", Mr Sheykh argued.

"The day you solidarised with student's, one was not expecting to see the students being arrested and tortured", the OCU told the lamed leader, warning him that the Iranian people would "no longer believe in any book, documentary or identity", referring to the controversial so-called documentaries produced and broadcast by the leader-controlled Iranian Radio and Television against dissident politicians and intellectuals.

Addressed respectively to the "Noble Iranian People"; the Head of the Judiciary; the Members of the Majles; the President and Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the students also warn Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami to be firmer, for, they say, "in case the helmsman of reform process do not dare to recapture the people's confidence, fear is that not only the half-friends, but all the reformists, including students, would loose that crucial trust".

The statement stresses that the Judiciary has targeted both the reform process and the students movement in order to "revenge the blow the Iranian people dealt the conservatives in the February Legislative elections by arresting present and former students leaders like Mr. Morteza Ahmadi".

Being Iran's largest students organisation representing all Iranian students, the OCU's statement clear warnings to the ruling conservatives is both a historic and political event, especially where it warns Mr. Khameneh'i that if he do not hear them, the events that led to the 1979 revolution could be repeated, but the other way round, analysts said. OCU WARNINGS 2301