On Monday 19 May 2008, at the first anniversary of the Polytechnic University Students, Majid Tavakoli, Ehsan Mansuri and Ahmad Ghassaban arrest, a meeting was held by “the Committee of the Arbitrary Detention”.
The families of three arrested students, students of different universities, some political activists and lawyers participated in this meeting.
Ali Nikoonesbati, who was recently sentenced to 5 months imprisonment, was first speaker of this meeting. He pointed out the judicial cases of some student activists and ambiguities in their investigation and legal proceedings.
After that, the letter of Majid Tavakoli’s mother, who has not seen her son since his arrest (one year ago), was read. She expressed her hope to accept the demand of provisional release by the related officials.
Abbas Hakimzadeh, the member of the Islamic Association of Polytechnic University Students who was arrested after the event of fabricated press and spent more than one month in prison, told briefly about his arrest. He, then, addressed to the judicial investigations of the arrested students and mentioned the ambiguities of the final sentence and all pressure that led to issuing long imprisonment for Ghassaban, Tavakoli and Mansuri.
Ismaeil Jabari, one of the political activists, as the other speaker, pointed out the hard condition of the social groups like women, workers and students in current days.
After that, the sister of Abolfazl Jahandar, briefly told about Abolfazl Jahandar condition and referred holding his court in private and considered it as a violation of Islamic Republic constitution. Mrs Jahandar added that the officials did not accept the demand for the provisional release of his brother.
Taghi Rahmani, the other well known activist, who spent 15 years in prison, talked about the present condition and duty of students to ask intellectuals and rulers on the management of the country.
Abdolfatah Soltani was the last speaker of the Committee of Arbitrary Detention Meeting. In his speech, Soltani criticized the treatment of the related officials who do not respect the rules and regulations of the accused person and regard their treatment as the violation of the constitution and laws.
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.
