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CONSERVATIVES CONTINUE TO CONDEMN STUDENTS PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT
By Safa Haeri
PARIS 17TH July (IPS) One female student died and about 1,400 people were arrested in recent pro-democracy protests, student's leaders said Saturday, offering their first estimate of the number of people killed and detained by the security forces of the Islamic Republic backed by Islamic pressure groups and other Law Enforcement units.
A communiqué issued by the "Elected Council of Students" (ECS) made of representatives of all Tehran universities and faculties sharply contradicted figures provided earlier by other sources that put the number of the people killed during the 6 days of bloody demonstrations by Iranian students at between 5 to 11, more than 200 wounded and between 500 to 1000 arrested, mostly after the "Black Wednesday" counter-students manifestation organised by the conservatives in support of the leader, the ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i and the velayate faqih, the corner-stone of the Iranian Islamic system.
Authorities have reported officially two dead, one soldier student in Tehran and the son of a cleric in Tabriz, the capital city of Eastern Azarbaijan Province, giving no figures as for the wounded and arrested. The students did not say how they arrived at their count of 1,400 arrests.
The unrest began when conservatives-paid thugs of Ansar Hezbollah pressure group, backed by Law Enforcement Forces and Intelligence Ministry's anti-riots special units savagely stormed the Tehran University dormitory on 8th July to stop peaceful meeting staged by about 300 students protesting the banning of the influential pro-reform, leftist daily "Salam".
Astonished and shocked witnesses, including government ministers, MPs and other officials described the devastation to the dorms the attacking forces as caused by a violent hurricane or the passage of Chenghiz Khan armies.
Eyewitnesses, hospital, students and opposition sources put the number of killed and wounded in the clash respectively at between 3 to 5 and more than 20.
As the authorities would adamantly refuse to sack the commander of the LEF the students would consider as responsible for the attack, the demonstrations continued day after day, producing more wounded and more arrests, culminating on Monday and Tuesday, when slogans comparing the ayatollah Khameneh'i with General Augusto Pinochet of Chili, denouncing him as a "dictator, supporting the riches, the corrupts and the criminals" appeared publicly, breaking a 20 years old taboo.
While demonstrators would call on Mr. Khameneh'i to step down, they would on the other hand carry posters of the President Mohammad Khatami as their symbol, highlighting the struggle between the powerless reformists and the conservatives who control the all key and strategic administrations, like the armed forces, the intelligence and security machines, the judiciary, the legislative, the public media.
But the President astounded the students when, appearing on the conservatives-controlled Television last Tuesday night, he firmly condemned the protest movement, warning the students that he would tolerate no more unrest. He also directed the Interior Ministry to ban all demonstrations. However, ultra-conservative organisation staged on Wednesday a march in support of the leader and the velayat.
The authorities imposed a virtual martial law as from Wednesday, following an order issued by Mr. Khameneh'i to his "beloved Basiji children" and other security forces to "cut the hands of all bandits, corrupts, atheists, anti-revolutionary, agent provocateurs and saboteurs acting on behalf of the enemy, banned all demonstrations and rounded up hundreds of people.
The secularist and nationalist Iranian People's Party, the only political force that openly calls for a fundamental change of the Islamic Republic informed that Mr. Khosrow Seif, the Acting Secretary General, Mr. Bahram Namazi and Mehran Mirabdolbaghi, members of the Central Committee of the Party had been detained.
Mr. Dariush Foruhar, and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari, both leaders of the IPP, were stabbed to death in their home late last November by official agents of the Intelligence Ministry who also killed activist and dissident writersMohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Ja'far Pouyandeh.
Mrs Maryam Shansi, a supporter of the protesting students and two others are also reported detained.
Despite firm promises by Mr. Khatami and public pressures for the identification of the clerics who ordered the murders, so far no one had been named except one scapegoat that the authorities said he committed suicide in prison with a depilatory product.
The ECS had given the authorities until Saturday 17th July to meet their demands, first of all the removal from office the LEF commander, Revolutionary Guard General Hedayatollah Lotfian, release all arrested students and remove the ban on Salam.
It also disclosed that students were looking to meet with both the leader and the president, adding that discussion between members of the ECS about the "opportunity" of meeting the authorities continue.
Not only members of the ECS represent different and sometimes opposing tendencies of the protest movement, but also there are sharp divergences inside each organisation as well.
The absence of Mr. Heshmatollah Tabarzadi, the students paramount leader who is in jail charged with insult against the leader and Mr. Manouchehr Mohammadi, the secretary general of the rival Association of Iranian Nationalist Students, who is in the hiding, has further complicated and weakened the protesting students vis-à-vis the authorities, now more united than ever thanks to the "defection" of the President to the hard liners camp.
Though the ECS says it is acting independently while representing all the student's organisations, yet most analysts say the council is controlled by the Strengthening Unity Office, the student's mainstream association led by Mr. Tabarzadi.
About the faith of the detained students, the ECS said its intervention with the authorities concerns only those arrested in the first three days of the demonstrations, considering that as from the fourth day, people alien to the students had "derailed" the movement by giving it very violent anti-State, anti-leader, anti-system coloration.
Observers in Tehran told Iran Press Service it seems that secret and less secret negotiations between representatives of the ECS and the authorities are taking place, led by the ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Chairman of the Council for the Discernment of the State's Interests (CDSI) and his deputy, general Mohsen Reza'i, encouraging the students to give up plans for further sit in or demonstrations.
Meanwhile, the same CDSI urged all the security, disciplinary and the Basij forces "not to spare a single moment" in dealing strongly with "rioters, the hostile elements and agents provocateurs" of recent unrest.
In a communiqué issued Saturday, the CDSI expressed regret over the attack on the student's dormitories, but it immediately voiced its all-out support for velayat-e-faqih, or the guardianship of supreme jurisprudent, by warning the students and the public at large against "crossing the 3 red lines" of velayat, the position of the leader and the very person of the ayatollah Ali Khamenehi.
For its part, the conservative-controlled Association of Qom Seminary Theologians in a statement dispatched by the official news agency IRNA called on the officials, especially President Mohammad Khatami, "not to abandon follow-up efforts for finding out root causes of the vicious incidents and for confronting with those who somehow prepared the grounds for the emergence and escalation of the events with their pens and words".
The Association described the students pro-democracy movement as "pre-organised by a handful of subservient elements which was about to become a national catastrophe".
Commenting the "illegal demonstrations and riots in the capital" (by the students) the English daily "Tehran Times"' harshly criticised Saturday the "biased attitude" to the "riots" adopted by the pro-reform newspapers, as well as foreign officials and media presenting the demonstrations as being aimed at paving the way for toppling Khatami's government".
"Why didn't these same groups condemn the demonstrations when they erupted? I they really believed that the demonstrations were aimed at toppling Khatami's government, they should have condemned them from the very first day. But instead of disapproving the illegal rallies, they projected them as part of a pro-democracy movement. Furthermore, despite president Khatami's call to the people to distance themselves from the rioters, some dailies continued to refer to the rioters as people", criticised the daily that reflects the views of the Intelligence circles.
Castigating America, Israel, Turkey, France and some other countries for cautioning the Iranian government against crackdown on the "so-called" pro-democracy students by terming the unrest a "pro-democracy student movement", Tehran Times noted that in spite of Khatami's stress that he would not permit illegal demonstrations and riots to undermine national security, they charged the president with betraying the students.
This is in a clear reference to 13th July article by Iran Press Service intitled "Betraying Students, President Khatami Shifts to Conservative Side" that quoted some students and analysts comparing Mr. Khatami's surprise turn about to Judas.
"In other words, when the rioters failed to achieve the results desired by the vested interests, then those foreigners and domestic media adopted stances contradictory to their previous attitudes and tried to portray the riots and demonstrations as aimed at weakening the reformist agenda of president Khatami", stated the daily in conclusion.
In another development, and as the conservatives continue to condemn the students, demonstrations of sympathy and support for them continue by the Iranian communities outside the country.
In Paris, a rally called by Iranian Writers Association in Exile brought together about 400 Iranians and French demonstrators, mostly students, that urged the Islamic authorities in Iran to accept the student's "legitimate and just" demands.
Held at the historical Bastille Square, protesters repeated some of the slogans chanted in Tehran during the demonstrations, like "Freedom of Thought, Always, Always" or "Freedom Of Thought, Not Possible With Dictator" and expressed their full support for the pro-democracy movement of the Iranian students.
Mr. Iraj Fatemi, an Iranian journalist present at the manifestation that was watched and filmed by thousands of foreign tourists, told IPS that not only Iranian of all ideological tendencies took part, but by any yardstick, the event was one of the largest ever organised by the Iranians Paris community.