Rise in Judicio-Security Confrontation with Students

Rooz Online:

While president Ahmadinejad was meeting the press and referring to the “dear students”, government agents pulled down the insignia of Lorestan University and shut its newsletter.

According to a statement issued by Daftare Tahkim Vahdat (Office of Strengthening Solidarity), “while taking refuge behind slogans supporting scientists and Iranian academicians, the president and his fellow doctrinaire thinkers have increased their judicio-security assaults on student activities to the extent that they now embroil the majority of student activists.” The assaults take place through disciplinary, security and judicial measures against student associations and banning of newsletters.

The statement also talks of disciplinary boards that try students in absentia denying them any opportunity to express or defend themselves and condemn them to various punishments. The University security offices today have more powers than any time before and they regularly violate the student’s private and public spheres, while creating violation files for many of them. READ MORE

According to the statement, in just recent weeks, Arash Khandeli, Mohammad Javad Doroodkeshan, and Siamak Nadali who are members of Lorestan Society have been sentenced to heavy disciplinary punishments that include expulsion for two academic terms. When they protested the sentences, their sentence was increased to three terms. And while these students were still under investigation, they were barred from entering the university.

Khandeli says, “When we protested the discrepancy between the date of our ban and the date we were actually barred from entering the university, student authorities replied that a new circular was going to be issued by the Ministry of Sciences on the issue the following week. And when we question how a punishment can be implemented retroactively for a regulation that did not exist at the time, they remain silent.”

These are not the only students who have been disbarred from attending their classes. Abbas Hakimzadeh, Abed Tavanche, students of Amir Kabir University too have been sentenced to disciplinary punishments denying them admissions to classes for a full term. It is noteworthy that Hakimzadeh’s case had been officially dismissed last year, but when new university officials were appointed, they re-opened the charges and the file. Amin Goleyi, Mohammad Amin Mahvash and Ahmad Mirzayi from Isfahan University’s medical school too were all banned from attending their school for a term. Three members of Shiraz’s Medical School Mohammad-Mehdi Ahmadi, Nader Dinari and Ruhollah Zali Moghadam have also been summoned to the school’s disciplinary committee and await its decisions.

A number of students at Orumieh University too have been called to its disciplinary board. Heavy sentences have been passed on former members and leaders of the Daftare Tahkim Vahdat, Ali Afshari, Abdullah Momeni, Mehdi Aminzadeh, Akbar Atri, Ahmad Farajee and Air Ballali. Even current members of the association such as Farid Modaressi, Reza Dalai Milan, Hussein Khodayari, Saeed Ardeshiri too are in the process of sentencing. In Isfahan, Emad Madhoosh, Ahmad Mirzai and Amin Gholei have been suspended from attending classes. In Kerman Saeed Ardeshir, Hossein Khodayari, Reza Dalai Milan have been sentenced to prison terms. In Tehran, the sentences of Abbas Hakimzadeh and Aabed Tavanche have been reduced.

The assaults are not confined to individuals alone. The activities of the Islamic Society of Lorestan province, Medical School of Kashan, Isfahan University, its medical school, and Rajayi University have been shut by authorities. In Lorestan, the Islamic Society is shut and its insignia is pulled down from a building. These measures are to deny students the forums through which they are active. So when the forums are shut, there are no open activities. This is why student publications too have been earmarked for closure.

On Takhte Siah (blackboard) newsletter Abdol-Hosseinpour says, “Within ten days there were to orders to shut the publication. The first time they said the editor was a former not current – student. The second time they justified the closure on grounds that it would improve the quality of the remaining publications.

The editor of Sepideh trade publication Armin Salmasi was summoned to court because he had published news on a trade issue. In the same light, student speeches are disrupted or outright banned, and the mass media is forbidden from publishing news of such bans and closures.

More than four months ago Iranian judiciary officials announced that student prisoners would be freed. Nothing has happened in that regard as well and the students continue to be behind bars. The head of the Judiciary had promised that they would be freed with the beginning of the new school year. That was four months ago. Even the Minister of Justice had said that the 15 students would be released regardless of their charges. In the words of a student, “not only did not release the existing student prisoners, they have actually added to them and increased their assaults on students, their activities and their organizations.”

The Islamic Societies of medical schools in the town of Kord issued a statement in which they complain that the university security authorities continue to limit student activities, monitoring their work through surveillance cameras now installed at the universities. Such measures are not even common outside the schools, even though an authoritarian regime prevails. “Even the Shah’s SAVAK did not transgress on student life in this fashion,” the statement reads.