DANGEROUS THREAT IN IRAN BY PARAMILITARIES
New York 23 Nov. (IPS) Human Rights Watch said Saturday in a statement that the "public threat" by Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i against peaceful student demonstrators could spark "a repeat of 1999 paramilitary violence in Iran", referring to the students uprising that was crushed by pressure groups.
Speaking to the top Iranian officials on Sunday, Ayatollah Khameneh’i ordered the students to stop with their ten days-long protest movement, denouncing the death sentence on Mr. Hashem Aqajari, a university professor and Islamist reformist, or face "popular forces", a term he uses for Basij volunteers and other thugs under his payroll.
On Friday, he repeated his menaces, saying the protesting students of being "manipulated" by the enemies of the Islamic Republic, meaning the United States.
Another conservative’s tenor; Ayatollah Ali Meskini, the Speaker of the Assembly of Experts, was even more blunt, accusing the students of "dancing to the American music" and to get "drunk with the smell of the dollar showered on them by the American".
The sentence, by the leader-controlled Judiciary sparked a wave of students and popular unrest in Iran and outrage outside, including a blunt warning by the European Union, Iran’s main trading partner and political supporter against the United States that has characterised the Islamic Republic as an "evil State".
Human Rights Watch said the statements were a thinly veiled threat by Mr. Khameneh’i to unleash the same paramilitary forces he used in July 1999 to put down the students protests.
"Despite worldwide condemnation of those events, the July 1999 events have never been properly investigated and those responsible have never been brought to justice", the New York-based Human Rights Watch said.
"Hardliners have used vigilante groups against student demonstrators in the past, and the results were tragic, said Hanny Megally, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division of HRW. Iranian leaders should be prosecuting the people responsible, not threatening to repeat the tragedy".
The HRW said it was concerned that the leader's apparent threat to act extra-constitutionally reflected the depth of the crisis in Iran and could lead to bloodshed.
"Iranian and international law both protect the students right to express their views peacefully and to assemble and associate freely, said Megally. Ayatollah Khameneh’i should immediately clarify his position or withdraw his comments before the situation deteriorates further", he added. ENDS HRW BACKS STUDENTS 231102