- 16 December 2009
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- 2 Comments
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- Events in Iran, Human Rights in Iran, Uncategorized
“70 Percent of University Students Oppose Government: Iranian Official”
16 December 2009 Posted By NIAC
Rooz Online (via Payvand) is reporting that Mohammad Mohammadian, head of the Supreme Leader’s Office of University Affairs, stated today that “According to the existing data, 70 percent of students voted against Ahmadinejad.” The situation in the universities nationwide is growing more chaotic very quickly, the article states. Here’s more:
Even for a while prior to the Student Day, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s supporters had lost the chance to speak at university campuses, their speeches or question and answer sessions often being interrupted by student protests.
The remarks of the supreme leader’s advisor in university affairs are made as student protests against the Ahmadinejad administration have grown in an unprecedented manner, with the university administration practically losing control of several large universities in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Mashad and Hamedan.
Security forces affiliated with the ministry of intelligence have been dispatching Basij and Revolutionary Guards foces into university campuses to oppress and stop the further spreading of peaceful student protests.
Mohammadian called for a firmer response to the students and professors allegedly “weakening the regime.”
Meanwhile, yesterday a group of professors from the Tehran University’s technical campus issues a statement blasting the Basij and Revolutionary Guards’ interference in the university’s affairs.
Professors from the Tehran University’s technical campus warned that the continuation of the situation would undermine the safety of university students, professors and staff, and demanded an immediate halt to the security forces’ presence in universities.
2 Responses to ““70 Percent of University Students Oppose Government: Iranian Official””
Arsalan, when I read reports of IRGC forces at university campuses and demonstrations, the credibility of the source and its reporter is compromised.
In all the videos and photos- and I mean all of them- one sees the IRIPF (both cadre and conscript-soldiers) and Basij. Not IRGC. It appears the elite Seyed-ol-Shohada Corps strategically perched on the northern gateway of Tehran has yet to be activated into a direct street-level security role.
It could be that 70% is a valid estimate of potentially anti-establishment students. During America’s anti-establishment movement during the late 1960’s to early 70’s, American students politically at odds with US administrations were about the same. Yet a conservative president won the election in 1968, and again in 1972 by a huge landslide. And US students behaved similarly toward establishment officials, and law enforcement was noticeably present on campus. I remember it well.
Sargord Pirouz, when I read your repeated attempts to compare the IRI’s brutality with the U.S. protest movement of the 1960s-70s, your credibility is further and further compromised. The IRI closed universities for a 2-year period in the early 1980s and purged it of “un-Islamic” professors and students (many of the IRI’s current “reformists” were also involved in this and other repressive measures). The IRI has killed well over 15,000 of its own citizens, a large number of whom were university and high school students. The US government, whom I disagree with on nearly its entire foreign and domestic policy, did not carry out such a Reign of Terror against its own citizenry in our lifetimes (nothing even remotely like this number of Americans were killed by US authorities during the 1960s-70s). This is the same IRI that you keep defending in your posts on this and other websites.