STUDENTS CONTINUE WITH PROTESTS, DEMANDS FULL FREEDOM
TEHRAN 18 Nov. (IPS) Thousands of Iranian students took on Monday to their universities campus to continue demands for the unconditional freedom of Dr. Hashem Aqajari, but also organising referendum.
The students went on with their protest movement oblivion of the leader’s decision to order the Judiciary to review the death sentence imposed on Mr. Aqajari, a 45 years-old university professor and Islamist thinker, and despite clashes, yesterday, with the Basij militias.
Speaker at the gathering defied warnings of a crackdown from Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i by stepping up their protests with vocal demands for greater freedom and said that his orders to the Judiciary not only shows that the verdict on the outspoken reformist was politically motivated, but did not go far enough.
"Our problem is not only the revision of the death sentence on Hashem Aqajari, but freedom of speech and freedom in general", Mr. Abdollah Mo’meni, a leader of the Office to Consolidate Unity (OCU) the Iranian student’s largest pro-reform organisation, told the gathering.
Mr. Aqajari had been handed a death sentence on charges of blasphemy and insult to the clerical corps by a court in the western city of Hamadan.
The sentence triggered a wave of unabated protest from the students, joined by hundreds of scholars and university professors.
In the face of mounting demonstrations and a chorus of criticism of the verdict, Mr. Khameneh’i on Sunday ordered the Hamadan Appeal Court to revise the ruling.
Students also chanted political slogans, including "Free political prisoners" and "Death to the Taleban in Kabul and Tehran", a reference to the Iranian ruling clerics.
ENDS AQAJARI PROTESTS CONTINUE 181102