Tehran admits rounding up 4,000 during protests

News, June 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info

Tehran admits rounding up 4,000 during protests
2,000 still being held in prison

Compiled by Daily Star staff, 6/28/03

Iran’s security forces made 4,000 arrests during the recent wave of anti-regime protests, with half of that number still in custody, the Islamic Republic’s prosecutor-general said Friday.
“In total, 4,000 people were arrested across the country, and 40 percent of those arrested were immediately freed,” Ayatollah Abdolnabi Namazi was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA and semi-official news agency ILNA.
“Currently there are 2,000 people who are still in prison, among whom there are not many students,” the ayatollah added, giving the first official figures for the number of arrests across the country.
In Tehran which was the epicenter of the June 10-20 demonstrations he said 800 people were arrested.
The protests began after a small student rally against the privatization of some university facilities snowballed into anti-regime protests around Tehran University, sparking severe clashes between protesters and Islamist vigilantes.
The protests the most serious since the July 9, 1999, clashes in Tehran also spread across the country and were marked by the unprecedented shouting of virulent slogans against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The protests fizzled out after a crackdown, and after scores of people were seriously injured and hundreds detained. One demonstrator died in the southern city of Shiraz in circumstances that remain unclear.
Namazi was also quoted as confirming that Iran’s authorities have banned students from commemorating next month the 1999 unrest, which saw at least one student die in riots that followed a heavy-handed police raid on a Tehran university dormitory. He said no events would be permitted on or off campus.
The crackdown has sparked anger among students, and has
placed yet more pressure on embattled reformist President Mohammad Khatami who has defended the right to protest but appears to wield little or no influence over the country’s security forces, judiciary or intelligence agencies.
In an open letter received Friday, a group of 106 prominent student activists called on Khatami to step in to defend the right to protest or else resign.
“We ask you to prevent an uproar before it is too late by finding a good way forward. Otherwise, you must act bravely by resigning from your post so as not to legitimize the policy of repression,” Khatami was told.
“We openly declare that these words are the final words of dialogue between the student movement and the ruling establishment,” students said in the strongly worded letter, which protested the trampling of legitimate freedoms and a government ban on street rallies to mark the July 9, 1999, raid on a Tehran University dormitory that killed one person and injured at least 20 others.
The 1999 attacks, led by police and hard-line vigilantes who support Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, triggered six days of nationwide protests, the worst since the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled pro-US Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
One of the signatories of the letter signatories, Saeed Razavi Faqih, said if Khatami failed to heed the students’ warning, the students would even stop recognizing the legitimacy of elected reformists within Iran’s ruling establishment.
“The rulers should know that confronting the student movement will have a bitter ending for this establishment, which has lost almost all its legitimacy,” he said.
Also Friday, a prominent Islamic cleric and politician said in a sermon that the unrest was part of an alleged United States plot to topple the nearly 25-year-old regime, and hence those detained in the unrest should be shown little mercy.
“This chaos was predictable, as after all, the Americans have been saying that they support the overthrow of the regime,” Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a member of the Council of Guardians legislative oversight body, told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran.
“Those who were arrested should be treated according to the law. There were a number of them who were fooled, but even they should also pay the price. This is no joke,” he added, describing the protesters as “mercenaries, thieves, smugglers, hooligans and Savaki” the ousted shah’s notorious secret police.
He also took aim at the United States President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
“The United States should understand that this regime is not a regime to be toppled by chaos. Wicked Bush and Blair should understand that here, they are facing a regime whose people are ready to sacrifice their lives,” he warned ahead of a visit to Tehran next week by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

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