Today is the 25th day that the student activist hero Majid Tavakolli is on hunger strike.
He was arrested 90 days ago when the ISA activist body at Tehran Amir Kabir University was trying to have elections.
More on Torturing the Students in Evin (ward 209) here.
link via cityboy
Some stories do not need elaboration. But the reason it gets so little press does. The Mullahs can torture with impunity because MSM equates any expose of Mullacracy crimes with a call for war. Such perception aided and abetted secular totalitarians in the Twentieth Century and it is aiding and abetting Islamists religious ones in the 21st. We may be getting older but we are not getting better.
Student Activists from Amir Kabir University, Saeed Derakhshan, Keyvan Ansari and Abolfazl Jahandar have joined the other three student activists Majid Tavakoli, Ahmad Ghassaban and Ehsan Mansouri who have been on hunger strike since last Saturday after two months and a half spent in Evin prison with no access to a lawyer or court hearing.
Now, there are reports that they are brutally tortured in the most shocking and barbaric ways. Human Rights Watch issued a statement demanding the immediate release of the students.
Kamangir has information about a support group for their defense, for what it’s worth.
A group of Iranian bloggers have started a movement to remember and cause awareness about the Iranian imprisoned student bloggers. The idea is to rename as many blogs as possible to “August the 5th: The day of support for jailed Iranian students”. I am not among the organizers of this movement but I am sick and tired of Iranians being jailed for expressing their opinions. I’ll join in. Please help us.
Bloggers support the jailed iranian student activists
August 5th 2007 is the 101-st anniversary of the Iranian constitutional revolution. BUT Iranian people still struggle for democracy and student activists are still sent to jails .Several student activists spend this year’s anniversary in jails. They include Mohammad Hashemi, Ali Nikoonesbati, Ali Vefghi, Bahareh Hedayat, Mehdi Arabshahi, Hanif Yazdani, Abodllah Momeni, Bahram Fayyazi, Habib Hajiheydari, Morteza Eslahchi, Mojtaba Bayat,, Masood Habibi, Saeed Hossein-nia, Arash Khandel, Ashkan Ghiasvand, Mohammad-Hossein Mehrzad, Ahmad Ghassaban, Majid Tavakoli, Ehsan Mansouri, and Amir Yaghoub-ali
In support and memory of our fellow activists, who some of them are bloggres as well, a group of Iranian bloggres will change their blog title on August the 5th to “August the 5th: The day of support for jailed Iranian students”. We invite you, even as a non-Iranian blogger, to participate in this cause. You can join by sending us e-mail to 14.mordad@gmail.com or write the name of your weblog in the comment box below, so it will be added to the list of the supporting weblogs
Nooshabeh Amiri:
When we were first year students, we knew little about 16 of Azar [December 7, Iran’s Student Day]. We also knew some general things about Iran’s past and the blood that had been shed, which was enough to motivate us to break a few windows, chant slogans and join others in their marches. My late professor’s famous poem was ingrained in each and every one of our minds: “if you stand up, if I stand up…”
The university cafeteria’s power suddenly went out and the windows began to shatter. It was a while before I mustered enough courage to throw a glass in the dark. Perhaps no one heard the sound of that glass breaking, except for the one who threw it: me. That was enough to make me afraid. I got up, ran in the dark, climbed the stairs, and suddenly: confrontation. I was standing in front of Dr. Aligholi Ardalan, the gray-haired dean of the university – and, of course, “one of the Shah’s tools,” (as we accused every official back then). In one second I imagined myself in prison, going through interrogation… but Dr. Ardalan gently said, “Please calm down, my dear. The officers are upstairs. They will know everything if they see you like this. Calm down. Go.”
I did not believe it. But there was something in Dr. Ardalan’s friendly and fatherly voice that calmed me down. As if mechanically, I asked, “Should I go?” He shook his head quietly and gently tapped me on the back. Many others left too on that day. Dr. Ardalan was standing on the university’s entrance steps, yelling at security officers, “Stay out of it, it’s over… It is 16 of Azar for God’s sake!”
The next morning I returned to the university. The rioting was over, all because of the wisdom of a man who understood youth and passion. Perhaps there were not many like Dr. Ardalan; because if there were, those small glass breakings would not have spread onto the streets and target the government.
I recalled this event to make a reference to what is going on today. Today, Ehsan Mansouri, Abbas Hakimzadeh, Ali Saberi, Babak Zamanian, Ahmad Ghassaban, Majid Tavakoli, Pouyan Mahmoudian, Meghdad Khalilpour, Majid Sheikhpour and many others of our students are behind bars and are being tortured.
Today, they drag Ehsan Mansouri out of his house and beat him so severely that the only thing they can then is to send him to the notorious Evin prison’s clinic Today, many mothers know what is being done to their children. Today’s university is run by people who only a little while ago were prepared to imprison any child of this land.
Let us ponder for a moment: there was a man like Ardalan in that system, but they still called the Shah “a traitor;” there were no *“starred” students but the Shah was still called “a traitor;” security officers did not sexually harass women in universities, but the Shah was still called “a traitor;” a para-military and security organization did not operate inside the universities under the guise of a student group, but the Shah was still called “a traitor.”
Tomorrow, what will they call those who do such things today?
And a final point. In tomorrow’s Keyhan newspaper its pro-regime editor Mr. Shariatmadari will probably write that “Rooz” is advocating for monarchy. The readers must be wise, especially when someone who is not yet a king acts like one. What really matters is for Ehsan and others to know that our eyes are wet with tears. We can’t sleep because of their pain. As for those who have made us suffer this pain and are able to sleep themselves – well, they have not heard the bad news yet.
This Video is dedicated to all Tehran Amir Kabir Polytechnic University active students in jail or still in university, who risk their lives on day to day basis against the violent dictatorship they live in.(Link via City Boy)
*Iran's "starred" students - politically active university students barred from continuing with their studies .
Potkin:
And now here are film footages of Iranian students getting beaten up at Alameh and Amirkabir university:
Herasat Attack 1
Herasat Attack 2
Herasat is a repressive body in every Iranian university and government work place which spies and reports on students and government employees and carries out such repressive acts as shown in the film footages above.Meanwhile, the chief of these thugs, Ayatollah Messbah Yazdi is invited to the Waterloo university by the Mennonites:
http://www.thestar.com/article/214357
I just hope Iranian ex-pats will do more than just a petition:
http://www.harkat.net/
From now on the word Mennonite for me will be synonymous with FILTH!
Katayoun on Waterloo University and inviting the thug Ayatollah to lecture on interfaith dialogue:
Without the slightest hesitation: An open-dialogue with the Iranian "scholar-clerics"!!!
City boy has an excellent update on the Arrest of Amir Kabir University students, as always... He also has a brand spanking new blog. Go on over and give him your support.
These are six of the seven student activists from Amir Kabir University currently in solitary confinement at the 209 branch of Evin prison. Their crime is simply protesting against the dictatorial police state of the country, or as the fundamentalist regime puts it, “threat to national security”, more like a threat to their very existence.
Dr. Keyvan Ansari - Alumni Association of Iran, since September 18 (2006)
Babak Zamanian - Member of ISA, since April 21
Ahmad Ghassaban - Editor of Sahar, since May 3
Maghdad Khalilpur (not pictured) - Editor of Atiye, since May 7
Majid Tavakolli - Member of ISA, since May 9
Puyan Mahmudian - Editor of Divar, since May 9
Majid Sheikhpur - Editor of Sar-e Khat, since May 9
Babak Zamanian, the former communication officer of ISA , is reportedly in a critical condition after the torture has left him with a heart condition. He has been recieving torture in order to admit to the allegations attached to him by the regime news outlets like Kayhan newspaper and Rajanews website that claimed he has connections to foreign countries.
The NY Times:
TEHRAN, May 7 — Students at Amir Kabir University fended off club-wielding university security guards on Monday and went ahead with elections for a pro-democracy association.
Despite the successful election at Amir Kabir, it is not clear that balloting for student associations will be allowed at other universities. The associations, a powerful center of support and communication among student democracy advocates, are a constant irritant to the government, which seeks to maintain strict control over politics and cultural norms.
The University of Science and Industry, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad taught before he was elected, has not been permitted to hold elections for the past two years. Students at Tehran University have vowed to hold a ballot, but have yet to do so.
Amir Kabir University has long been a center of student political activity. Students there chanted against Mr. Ahmadinejad when he visited the university late last year and set fire to posters bearing his likeness.
A student leader, Mehrdad Khalilpour, was arrested Monday by security officials, but two of his comrades managed to escape. Among other student leaders, Babak Zamanian was arrested late last month and Ahmad Ghassaban was arrested on Friday.
However, the student democracy advocates said they scored a victory on Monday when they managed to hold their annual elections.
“The students reached the conclusion that the only way was to resist,” said Ehsan Mansouri, a student leader who has been banned from attending classes. “The students guarded the ballot boxes as they were attacked and clubbed severely by the university security guards.”
Protests erupted last week after four student publications appeared with articles that offended religious sensibilities. Student advocates denounced the articles, saying the publications had been forged in an effort to frame the students.
Under Iran’s Islamic law, punishment for the offense, technically “insulting religious sanctities,” can be death. One of the articles had raised what were seen as offensive questions about the return of the 12th Imam — the messiah in Shiite Islam.
Conservatives protested last week inside and outside the university, calling for a second cultural revolution. Under the first, which followed the 1979 Islamic revolution, universities around the country were closed, and liberal students and professors were purged.
The pressure on student advocates seems to be part of a major social and political crackdown. Women and younger men have been the target of the vice police in the past two weeks, with officers patrolling the streets and cautioning or arresting people they accused of looking immodest.
A prominent art professor, Nureddin Zarrinkelk, was expelled from Tehran University last week after he commented about the beauty of a woman’s hair at one of his classes.
The police also started seizing satellite dishes last week. Because the dishes provide access to opposition television channels they are officially banned, but that does not stop large numbers of people from using them.
Reformist politicians, who were marginalized after Mr. Ahmadinejad’s election two years ago, became alarmed last week when a former nuclear negotiator, Mohammad Hussein Moussavian, was arrested on espionage charges. To many here, the arrest seemed to signal a new crackdown on social freedoms.
“No one should be surprised if they stage another cultural revolution and shut down the universities,” said Saeed Leylaz, an economist and political commentator in Tehran. “The Islamic Republic has reached a stage that wants to suppress any kind of dissent, even if that means creating a police state.”
I applaud the NY Times for reporting the democracy movement in Iran. Thanks.
ABF, for the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran