Largest Student Movement In Iran Eroding Clerical Dogma
The Iranian government has beefed up security at universities to prevent demonstrations, but protest and civil disobedience continue by a defiant generation.
The Iranian government has beefed up security at universities to prevent demonstrations, but protest and civil disobedience continue by a defiant generation.
In a latest move, officials at Sharif University in Tehran have expelled students who have been at the forefront of protests.
“A number of students who have played a key role in stirring up unrest at university have been temporarily banned from attending the courses,” Sharif university said in an announcement.
They also stated that the canteen of the university would be closed until further notice to uphold gender segregation and prevent mixed dining by male and female students, which has become an act of civil disobedience by students.
Reports say up to now 33 students have been banned from entering Sharif university.
On Sunday, the plainclothes Basiji forces of Sharif University closed the doors of the canteen and placed tables and chairs behind it, blocking students from entering, but the students broke the doors and expelled the Basijis and ate together.
Avant-Garde Student Movement
Since the beginning of the protest movement in mid-September, university students have opened a new chapter of their struggle against the clerical regime with the modern slogan of “Women, Life, Liberty”.
Female students wave their headscarves in the air or stand in front of security forces without their mandatory hijab.
Perseverance and resistance of the students clearly shows that the repressive approach by the government will not work in against this generation born after 2000. Even if the clerical regime can silence their voices for a few days, it cannot stop their fundamental demands.
Students are sending a message to people across the country that the university as a civil institution is still dynamic and alive, despite the policy of expulsion, censorship, and efforts to depoliticize the university.
The dynamism and political awakening also send a clear message to government that students will not remain silent despite repression.
History of Academic Movements in Iran
To reach this point, the university and students experienced many ups and downs during the past three decades. Their movement has been interrupted sometimes due to repression, but it has never been stopped.
In 1999, a student uprising stunned the Iranian capital Tehran for five days. Students objecting to the shutdown of Salam Daily held protests in a struggle for freedom. Between July 8 and 13, the hardliners cracked down on student killing four and injuring nearly 200.
During the following few years many students preferred to leave the country in a dramatic brain drain.
In 2009, the universities were affected by a controversial presidential election. With the formation of the Green Movement and the slogan of “Give back my vote”, students once again took to the streets to protest vote rigging which led to re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president.
Protests lasted all through the fall of 2009 and hundreds of students were arrested and tortured in prisons around the country, with former inmates alleging mass rape of men, women, and children by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in prisons such as Kahrizak and Evin. Opposition groups said at least 72were killed in the three months following the election.
Ten years later in November 2019, students once again joined the protesters who were angry over an abrupt fuel price hike. The movement, which lasted a week, gradually turned into expression of discontent over economic woes and corruption.
In the most violent and severe antigovernment unrest since the rise of Iran’s Islamic Republic in 1979, the regime shut down the internet nationwide and killed as many as 1,500 people including students.
More Widespread, Modern, Radical in 2022
Now, with nationwide protests rejecting Islamic Republic after the death of Mahsa Amini last month, students nationwide have launched a new movement to stand against the political system.
The attack of Basiji thugs and security forces on Sharif University in September provoked a wave of sympathy in other universities.
It seems this is the largest and most widespread student solidarity with public protests that has spread even to small campuses in remote areas of Iran.
The Berlin rally was the biggest-ever gathering of Iranians outside Iran, which took place peacefully and successfully, drawing crowds from most European countries.
There is little doubt that for now the protest movement, that many call ‘the revolution,’ has brought about a strong unity on one major issue – people in Iran and in the diaspora do not want the clerical regime.
Gone is the idea of being patient and waiting for reforms in Iran.
Since 2017, the governing military-clerical elite has proven that it is increasingly tilting toward more despotism and radicalism in domestic and foreign policies. Even regime insiders who were a bit more moderate have been completely sidelined since February 2020, when an engineered election handed over the parliament to hardliner elements mostly connected with the Revolutionary Guard.
They were the ones who in December 2020 voted for high levels of uranium enrichment, bringing Iran very close to a nuclear threshold state. They also refused direct talks with the United States in the long and fruitless negotiations in Vienna since April 2021.
The current mobilization and unity among diaspora Iranians in Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia and elsewhere, pose a challenge to Western governments who are suddenly faced with their own citizens of Iranian descent demanding stronger policies toward the Islamic Republic.
A case in point was a tweet by US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley on Sunday who praised Iranian marchers in Washington DC and Los Angeles, but then said that demonstrators are asking “their government to respect their dignity and human rights.”
More than 2,500 people responded to his tweet mostly challenging his formulation that Iranians simply want respect from their government. They said that Iranians reject the current regime, not that they are asking for a change of behavior by the authoritarian system. There were as many critical comments as ‘Likes’ that Malley’s tweet received. Some even asked for his resignation as a Biden official who in their perception is not sympathetic to what most Iranians want.
American Iranian activist and women’s rights advocate Masih Alinejad tweeted on Sunday, saying it is time for Malley to be replaced.
An Instagram post by Iran International on Sunday asking the public what they think about Malley’s tweet elicited almost 7,000 comments, almost all critical of the US envoy.
The criticism of Malley goes back to his role as an architect of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and the lead negotiator to restore that accord in the Biden Administration; a step that would provide tens of billions of dollars to the clerical regime, giving it the means to suppress protests and enrich its militant proxies in the region.
The activist segment of the Iranian American community has become self-assured and more determined to support the protesters inside the country. Wobbling by Democrats will cost them votes, as there is already a degree of skepticism about Jimmy Carter’s party seen as responsible for abandoning the Shah in 1978 and helping to bring the Islamic Republic to power.
European governments will also soon realize that there is a substantial Iranian voting bloc in Germany, Britain, Sweden and some other countries. Already, second and third generation Iranians are getting elected to public office in some European countries. Two young Iranian women became ministers in Sweden this month.
The rallies in support of protesters in Iran are giving the Iranian diaspora an organization and grassroots leaders who reject pro-regime lobbying groups they have come to discredit lately. Their role is most evident in Canada, where the government in October adopted sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard.