Iran cracks down on student protests in universities

Iranian students are besieged by an official clampdown in the universities, with a wave of arrests and expulsions.
This pre-emptive tactic is in anticipation of a major anti-government protest to be held on Monday.

Police enforce rule
In addition, authorities are intensifying enforcement of Islamic morals on women's dress and men's hair length, to further punish and discourage political dissence and civil unrest.

Students confined to campus
Students report that authorities have cracked down at campuses nationwide, in an attempt to prevent the demonstrations from becoming widespread. Students recruited as informers by the pro-government Basij militiamen are being told to be more watchful and to inform on any classmates suspected of being pro-opposition "troublemakers."

Police Statement issued
The police warned of a tough response, especially if demonstrators try to break out of their containent area inside the campuses and into the streets. "Any gathering or ceremony outside the permitted designated places will be considered illegal and an act of provocation towards the authorities. If this happens then the police will take quick, forceful and decisive action," a statement said.

Thought Control
The crackdown was described by students as part of a widespread government campaign to control, not only internal 'security' issues but also 'open thinking and new ideas' at universities. Universities are often perceived as strongholds of revelution and reform movements in oppressive regimes. Iran believes that the universities are behind the unrest and public demonstartions that took to the streets after the disputed presidential election in June.

Courses Banned
The university curriculums have also been taken under the control of the authorities. Some courses seen as too Western-based and promoting free thinking, have been replaced with more strict "Islamic" fundamental ones, students say.

Abuse of Women
Since classes began in October at Tehran's prestigious Sharif University of Technology, members of "herasat," a feared force of guards and morals police in universities, have been instilling fear and repression by policing student behaviour. Openly stopping and abusing women at campus gates for wearing clothes that are too colourful or not all-covering enough.

Herasat's role in oppression
A herasat official uses a cellphone to photograph male students with long hair or those wearing colorful T-shirts, said Kouhyar Goudarzi. "If a student complains, he grabs his student card and says 'when you look like a human being, you will get your card back,"' he said.

"Student dissatisfaction has reached a point where it's about to explode," he said.

Expulsion as punishment
Goudarzi, a 23-year-old aerospace student, said he was expelled because he spoke to the BBC's Persian TV service about a campus demonstration in October.

Aggressive surveillance
"Six months later, the fire is still burning," said Atieh Vahidmanesh, a 24-year-old economics post-grad at Sharif University. "We are under aggressive surveillance."

"Not all our sympathisers are active themselves, many are afraid to come to the protest," said one student leader at Tehran's Allameh Tabatabei University who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of further persecution.

"We are not calling on others to participate because we don't want them to pay the high price of protest in Iran," he said.

Pro-governemnt students
Some pro-government students on campus dismiss such talk. "The western media are used to exaggerating issues," said Mahdi Eslami. "I don't feel there's been any change in the atmosphere of universities." Interestingly, the pro-government supporters have no fear of retribution from speaking to the press and are open to their names being revealed to the press.

Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a political science professor at Tehran's Allameh Tabatabaei, a leading humanities university, said "it's not a police atmosphere at the university. Students are stricly controlled, but not openly"; e.g. new students are confined to separate dorms, to shield them from 'contamination' from older, more politicised students, he said.