STUDENTS CALLING FOR REFERENDUM, CLASHED WITH BASIJ MILITIA
By an IPS Correspondent
TEHRAN 19 Nov. (IPS) Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the leader of the Islamic Republic has ordered Basij volunteers and other pressure groups such as the Ansar Hezbollah to enter university campus and stop further demonstrations by students, well-informed sources disclosed Tuesday.
Following Mr. Khameneh'i decision, thousands of Basij militia, backed by Revolutionary
Guards, Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) and plain-clothes security
units entered universities in Tehran and other major cities, demonstrating
against pro-reform students and chanting slogans in favour of the lamed leader.
Ayatollah Khameneh'i took the decision to unleash the pressure groups after he became under intense pressures from hard line conservative clerics who criticised him for his "leniency" towards students protesting a death sentence pronounced ten days ago by the Judiciary on Dr. Hashem Aqajari, a university professor and Islamist reformer.
The sentence, delivered by a court in the western city of Hamadan, sparked a wave of protests unprecedented since the July 1999 students uprising.
The protest movement reached its peak Monday with thousands of students gathering in campus in Tehran and other cities’ universities, chanting slogans against the senior ruling leaders, singling out Ayatollah Khameneh'i, Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmood Hashemi Shahroodi and former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, without naming them directly.
On Sunday, Mr. Khameneh'i had warned he would call in "popular forces" if the senior officials could not come together and solve major problems the nation faces.
The Revolutionary Guards, the Basij and other hard line militias are referred to as "popular forces" that Mr. Khameneh'i also refers to them as his "children".
But faced with a continuing and growing protest movement, he backed off, ordering the Judiciary to revise the verdict.
One deputy warned, in an apparent reference to the leader’s warning, that the reformists could also summon popular forces.
"We also know how to drag people on to the streets," Jasem Shadidzadeh told the reformists-controlled Majles. "Right now, we do not consider it to be to the benefit of country, but if one day it is, we will pour people on to the streets to slap their faces".
Some student’s leaders said Monday that they were not satisfied with the review order. "What we are after is a public apology to both Mr. Aqajari and the universities from Ayatollah Shahroodi in the one hand and restoration of full democracy and freedom of expression on the other", one student from the Office for Consolidating Unity (OCU) told a gathering of more than 5000 at the Sharif Technical University of Tehran.
Students also demanded that national referendum to be organised, allowing the Iranians to choose their regime, and chanted "Referendum, referendum, the way to people’s salvation!"
The OCU is the Iranian students largest pro-reform organisation.
Analysts said the speeches on Monday clearly showed that the movement is becoming more political and more radical.
But the meetings at several universities across the country were disrupted by hundreds of Basiji, young boys drafted from poor, illiterate, peasant families and dutifully brainwashed in orthodox Islamic teaching and answerable to the person of the leader.
This was the first time in the past eleven days of protest that the Basiji had clashed with pro-reform students.
One student leader was rendered unconscious for 20 hours after a similar clash with hardliners in the southwestern town of Yasouj on Monday, the independent Iranian Students News Agency ISNA reported.
But the row over the controversial sentence continues unabated, with the Iraqi-born Hashemi-Shahroodi defending his judges saying: "Justice in the judiciary is not based on expediency."
"His remarks show they do not want to step back", observed Mr. Sa’id Razavi Faqih, an OCU leader. "If this continues, they should be ready to pay a heavy price for judicial despotism", he warned.
However, on Tuesday, bearded men and black chador-clad women of the Basij militia entered Tehran University, as police tried to lock out thousands of reformist students from another campus in the capital and prevent them from holding a rally.
"We are ready, we don't have tolerance any more", said one Basij leader addressing the Tehran University meeting.
Reformists accuse conservatives of trying to trigger clashes as a pretext for a crackdown and the arrest of top reformers. Hardliners respond that the students have insulted the leader.
"Our red lines are the leader and the leadership. We will not remain silent. Passing those red lines has a heavy price", the Tehran University speaker said.
"Long live Khameneh’i," the militiamen chanted. "No to Taleban, in Kabol or in Tehran", the pro-democracy students responded, as the LEF locked some 2,000 students out of another Tehran campus for some two hours until the weight of numbers outside obliged security forces to let them in.
Witnesses said students affiliated to the Islamist Basij militia beat some rally organisers and journalists, apparently angered by a speaker who criticised Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i.
Police outside Sharif University arrested several people who refused to leave the area. A small group of women said they had followed a call by an opposition satellite television station, based in the US, to come out and support the student protests.
Reformists backing the embattled President Mohammad Khatami charges that the conservatives deliberately handed over the death sentence of Mr. Aqajari in order to block two bills introduced to the Majles by Mr. Khatami aiming to curb the powers of the conservative judiciary and the Council of Guardians which has given itself the right to veto any candidate at any election.
Meanwhile, a Basij commander unveiled plans to call out more than five million of its members onto the streets on November 29 to mark the "Qods" (Jerusalem) Day.
Decided by Grand Ayatollah Roohollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution of 1979, the so-called "International Qods Day" coincide with the end of the Muslims fasting month of Ramazan, but is ignored by all other Muslim countries.
The plans for the rally were announced Tuesday by the Rev. Guards General Mohammad Hejazi in national newspapers, stating that the Basij rallies would take place across the country, including in the capital Tehran. ENDS STUDENTS PROTESTS GET POLITICAL 191102