”My latest university registration was suspended on Herasat’s [university security’s] orders and the university’s Herasat has not provided me with any explanation or legal justification for why I have been barred from continuing my education.”
These are the words of Soheil Asefi, a contributor to Rooz, who was released on a 100 million toman [about 100 thousand U.S. dollars] bail after spending more than 60 days in solitary confinement at the ministry of intelligence’s detention center - Evin Prison’s Ward 209. He was forced to quit journalism and contributing to Rooz after being released from prison.
This young journalist decided to complete the few remaining semesters of his university education in the hopes of a brighter future. However, he has been deprived of this right too. He has this to say: “The head of the university’s Herasat, which cancelled my registration, told me that my registration is conditional on obtaining a permission letter form the ministry of intelligence or Revolutionary Court. I have followed up with the Revolutionary Court several times since eight months ago, when I was released from prison, but they are not responsive at all and have not even allowed me to state my case for them.”
Asefi adds, “The head of the university’s Herasat, who insisted that the order was issued by higher officials and that he is just following orders, announced lately that the decision was not handed down from above and that he is personally responsible for the decision.” The head of the university’s Herasat who had initially agreed with the conditional registration of this student, now has cancelled his registration without providing an order, legal justification, or any written explanation, and no organization or institution is responsive regarding Soheil Asefi’s situation.
Asefi said, “In a meeting that I had with my attorneys regarding this matter they stated that, based on norms and rules, a student’s suspension must pass several filters, but despite the meeting of the disciplinary committee to make a decision on my status, the head of the committee announced that they have nothing to review and deferred my case to the university’s Herasat.”
This young journalist has been barred from continuing his education even though according to Articles 2 and 43 of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution, and also Articles 26 and 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Article 19 of the U.N. Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, education is a right. According to Article 570 of the Islamic Penal Code, it is a crime to deprive anyone from the right to education and punishments have been set aside for it. Nevertheless, no one is responding to Soheil’s demands and no court is willing to hear his case.
Rooz
one must not forget that one aspect of “security” cases is the image that they carry for the groups that advance such issues. Therefore, before fake charges take to the news-media and become public, those who have had a hand in arresting the students must be weakened. Otherwise, after the severe charges are made public, repeated and are tied to the image of the actors, even the intervention of the head of the judiciary (as history demonstrates) cannot be of much help to the detainees.
How can we tell the judiciary officials of Iran that according to law juveniles can stay alive and continue to live with appropriate and suitable punishment? How must one make this request from the judiciary a public and wide-spread demand and point out that killing a juvenile who has not wholeheartedly committed an act does not solve any of the real problems facing the country?
it is easy to predict that the success of student activists in imposing their will and demands on government officials at academic institutions, such as the Teachers Training college and Zanjan University (where the students boldly took the initiative into their own hands), would result in a backlash by extreme right-wing officials who would plan an “instructive” counter-attack against the student movement.Hopefully such a reaction will not come. But from an analytic perspective, one must not negate it altogether.
This is the reason that the moment imprisoned students step out of prison, it becomes clear to every one why they were put behind bars: for simply criticizing the president. It becomes instantly clear why they were subjected to interrogations and what questions were asked of them. These are the events that portray the image of this country. Students, social activists and journalists are certainly not on the list of those that dent this image. The publication of the arrest of students because of their criticism of the president brings forth a caricature image of Mahmud Ahmadinejad which does not match the claims that he made at Columbia University or the image that the regime strives to present about its standing.
There are at least 70 young people on death row who at the time of their arrest were under the age of 16. In the past 12 months, Iranian organisations claim that 80 feminists have been arrested and 20 of them have been sentenced from three to five years in jail. A total of 54 journalists have ended up in prison, several were released without trial after serving jail time, while others remain behind bars. In the past 12 months, 34 newspapers and magazines, among them the feminist magazine Zanan, have been shut down.
