With the approach of 9th anniversary of 18 Tir (9 July 1999), overally 11 students arrested by the security forces in Tehran and Mashhad. Ali Gholizadeh the member of Islamic Association of Shahrood, Ali Saberi the old member of Islamic Association of Amirkabir University (Polytechnic), Ashkan Arshia and Mehdi Ghodsi the members of Islamic Association of Ferdosi University of Mashhad, Reza Arab the Arshia the member of Islamic Association of Mazandaran University are members of the Arbitrary Detention Committee in Mashhad.
The mentioned committee was formed to pursuit arrested people and students condition who was detained in public demonstration for protest to economic condition of country in June in Mashhad.
After the arrests, intelligence forces inspected their homes and took some of their stuffs.
Moreover, Sajad Rajabi, Mohammad Zeraati and Mohammad Mizban are the other students who arrested during last weeks. Tohid Dolatshena and Farzad Hassanzadeh were arrested on the public demonstration of Mashhad with some other people.
In Tehran, also, Mehdi khodaei and Salman Sima two student of Azad University together with Majid Asadi the students of Alame Tabatabaei University were detained during this week in Tehran. So the number of the arrested students reached 13 on the threshold of 18 Tir (9 July 1999).
Ali Nikoonesbati, the Charge of public relation of Daftar-Tahkim-Vahdat, the main Students Union in Iran, confirmed the arrest of 8 students during this week and told the official of the country think the removal of all critics in any way. He continued the government just intends to create intimidation among students but as usual this kind of action will be ineffective with the student’s resistance.
It is worth of notification that on the students’ protest of July 9th, 1999 was meted by harsh attack of Ansar-E Hizbullah (an organization loyal to the regime). At night they had burst into student dormitories at the university and attacked students in their beds so the considerable numbers of students were injured and some were killed. Consequently chain demonstrations and riots were held in Tehran in protest to this violence.
What we have said here is only a brief listing of academic violations and denial of right to education in Iranian universities today. Students are determined to continue their legal and rightful struggle to promote independence of universities and uphold academic freedoms, although many are sacrificed down this path.
Iran is a state party to both the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (without reservation) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), both of which prohibit the execution of persons under the age of 18 at the time of their offense. In ratifying the CRC, Iran declared an extremely broad reservation, “not to apply any provisions or articles of the Convention that are incompatible with Islamic 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?
Thousands of university students in an Iranian city have held a protest against the attempted sexual harassment of a female colleague by a top university official, the press reported on Monday. About 3,000 students at the university in the northwestern city of Zanjan staged the sit-in protest over the weekend at a sports hall on campus, the reports said.
