IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BANNED ALL DEMONSTRATIONS ON 9 JULY
TEHRAN 8 Jul. (IPS) He government of President Mohammad Khatami rejected all demands by students for holding peaceful marches and banned all rallies aimed at marking the third anniversary of the 9 July 1999 students uprising.
The interior ministry said Monday that all rallies and demonstrations were banned "in order to prevent abuse by trouble-makers", the official news agency IRNA reported, referring to possibilities that people would answer positively calls from Iranians outside to demonstrate against the Islamic regime and its clerical leaders.
Iran's largest, but fragmented pro-reform student group, the Office for Consolidating Unity (OCU), said it would refrain from holding a "silent rally" Tuesday in Tehran to mark the anniversary if it would lead to "social disturbances," the student news agency ISNA reported Sunday.
On the night of eight July 1999, Law Enforcement Forces (LEF), backed by Islamic thugs and special units of the Intelligence Ministry attacked with an unprecedented violence and brutality students who were demonstrating in their dormitories peacefully against the closure of the "Salam" (Peace) newspaper, then the only voice calling for changes and reformists.
Some students were thrown out of the windows, one of them was killed, scores were injured, and more than 1.500 were arrested and taken to prison were they some of them, like Ali Afshari, Manoochehr Mohammad and his brother Akbar and more than all, Ahmad Batebi, who was caught flagging a blood-stained T-shirt of a student, were tortured.
Mr. Batebi was condemned to death after his picture made the cover of the
prestigious and influential British weekly "The Economist", but his
sentence was lowered to 15 years of jail.
The Mohammadi brothers also were first sentenced to death, but were then reduced to 13 and 15 years imprisonment. Mr. Manoochehr Mohammad had been transferred two weeks ago to a remote prison instead of being sent to a hospital for treatment, as promised by the authorities.
The raid led to six days of popular demonstrations, unprecedented since the 1979 revolution, against the Islamic regime and its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, who finally, with the approval of the newly elected president, Mohammad Khatami, ordered revolutionary guards and security forces to crush the unrest "at any cost".
The incident was the first major crisis in the tenure of Mohammad Khatami, the candidate that had received more than 20 millions of votes because of the reforms he has promised during his electoral campaign in the one hand and the voters desire to "punish" the conservatives clerics who had presented Hojjatolelslam Ali Akbar Nateq-Noori as their candidate.
The uprising left a scare on the face of Islamic Republic and marked a cooling in relations between students and Iranian young generation with Mr. Khatami.
An Iranian dancer who has been living in Los Angeles has been given a 10-year suspended prison sentence in Iran on charges of corrupting the nation's youth.
In the opinion of Mr. Heshmat Tabarzadi, one of the first leaders of the OCU, the authorities deliberately attacked the students to use it as a pretext for stopping further popular demands for changes, knowing that students were carrying the flame of the reforms.
Conservatives-backed and controlled newspapers hailed the decision and at the same time, warned the government to stand firm in opposing any attempt to organise demonstrations by counter-revolutionaries.
In an editorial, the "Resalat" daily, which is reflecting the opinion of the bazaar and the clerical oligarchy said the Interior Ministry would be held responsible for any disturbances on the 9 July. ENDS STUDENTS UPRISING ANNIVERSARY 8702