POLICE CLASHED WITH STUDENTS, MADE TENS OF ARRESTS
TEHRAN 7 Dec. (IPS) Security, Police and plainclothes forces clashed with Iranian students demonstrating Saturday in Tehran and other major cities against the regime on the occasion of the Student Day, arresting "tens" of them, according to eyewitnesses.
In Tehran, demonstrations had started peacefully earlier in the day within
the university campus, with speakers reiterating student’s calls for
referendum, the Judiciary’s apology to Dr. Hashem Qajari, the academic
sentenced to death on charges of apostasy and the release of all political
prisoners.
But when a large group of students, estimated at 3.000 to 5.000 came out of the university, they were immediately charges with brutality by plainclothe men believed to be members of the Islamist thugs known as Ansar Hezbollah.
As the authorities had forbidden any demonstrations outside the universities and warned that any slogans against the senior leaders of the Islamic Republic would be immediately punished, an eyewitness told Iran Press Service that the first slogans against Ayatollah Khameneh'i were said by some of the same plainclothes, like "Khameneh'i, get lost", providing the Basij volunteers, security and Law Enforcement Forces to attack the protesters.
"Down with Dictatorship); "Katami, resign"; "Refrundum"; "Akbar [Hashemi Rafsanjani] is living like a king, the people are begging"; (Ansar [Hezbollah] commits crime, the leader cover them" were among other slogans heard at the demonstrations outside the university, sources said, adding that they saw some people wounded when attacked by the plainclothes men, armed with "white arms".
President Mohammad Khatami had refused to go to the University and address the students, as he used to do in the past years, a clear sign of him being abandoned by the students, who consider him and the official reformers as having sided with the hard line conservatives.
Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a vice president and close friend of the lamed President has explained President’s decision, saying that Mr. Khatemi had decided not to attend the Students Day as a "sign of sympathy for the students".
But the explanations convinced no one, particularly the students, who, during their three weeks protest movement in denunciation of the death sentence on aqajari, placed him on the same level as other unpopular leaders, such as Mr. Khameneh'i or Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president.
A correspondent for the French news agency AFP said police stormed the students after some demonstrators called for the resignation the country's chief of Judiciary, the Iraqi-born Ayatollah Mahmood Hashemi-Shahroodi.
"Several hundred people had begun to gather in Enqelab (Revolution) Avenue outside the campus where police had lined up a barrier of buses to block the view of the student demonstration inside", AFP reported, adding that demonstrators outside the precincts of the university hurled rocks at the buses, breaking some of their windows and also called out to passer by to join them, prompting police to move in with truncheons to break them up.
"3.000 to 4.000 students and people outside the university doors were protesting the present political atmosphere prevailing in the country, called for holding referendum and free all political prisoners as well as all the press that have been shut, but they were attacked by the forces of repression", confirmed Mr. Abdollah Mo’meni, a leader with the Office for Consolidating Unity (OCU), students largest organisation.
ENDS STUDENTS DAY 71202