Socialist Action /August 1999
Students Challenge Iranian Regime
By GERRY FOLEY
Massive protests of Iranian students and other youth in July presented
the authoritarian clericalist regime that was constituted shortly after
the 1979 revolution with its greatest challenge yet. The upsurge exposed
increasingly explosive contradictions.
Despite the rapid political turn to the right of the Islamic leadership,
the revolution set the masses in motion and aroused aspirations among the
vast layers of the population that the regime was obliged to try to meet.
In particular, education has expanded. There has been a considerable increase
in literacy. There are now 600,000 students in state universities.
This educated youth, however, are frustrated by the stagnation of the
economy and the authoritarian and obscurantist political regime. The election
to the presidency of the moderate Mohammad Khatami two years ago aroused
hopes for a liberalization. However, the real power remained in the hands
of the conservatives.
The frustration of the youth exploded when the conservatives decided
to move to shut down a moderate newspaper, Salaam. The question of free
press and free speech is obviously a major one for student youth. But the
real issue was larger than that. 
The suppression of Salaam showed that the conservatives were still in
control and that there was not going to be any liberalization. The students
lost their patience.
Although the initial protests seemed to support Khatami and the liberals,
they quickly radicalized. When the president called on Tehran University
students to end their sit-in, they refused. According to Kargar, the journal
of the Iranian Revolutionary Socialist League, published in London, one
of the slogans that emerged in the demonstrations was "Khatami kari
bekon ya bemir" ("Khatami, do something or go to hell!").
A bitterer one was "Mikosham Mikosham, anke baradaram kosht"
("I will kill the one who kills my brother!"). On July 5, according
to Kargar, seven students were killed by police in their dormitories in
Amir Abaad near Tehran. Another two students reportedly died in the hospital.
Many others were injured.
Kargar reported July 12: "Some of the wounded came back to the students
while having signs of torture on their bodies. The regime's brigades burnt
their faces with gas, took out their scapular bones and many more.
"They beat the students in the name of Imam Husain [one of the martyrs
of the Shi'ism, the official religion of the Islamic Republic]. ... They
made a death tunnel in the dormitory's hallways and beat the students to
death in those tunnels.
"People were shocked by the facilities of dormitories when the doors
of dorms were open to the public. They compared these rooms with the prisons
of the POW's in Iraq."
The student protesters at Tehran University raised six demands on the
government for ending their sit-in: "(1) Delivery to us of the bodies
of those killed in the massacre. (2) Permission to hold a march in commemoration
of the martyrs. (3) The authorities must designate those responsible to
the public. (4) The National Security Council must apologize to the students.
(5) The government must clarify its position or resign. (6) Khamenei himself
must point out those responsible."
The demands were not met and Kargar posted a dispatch from students
in Iran a few hours later that reported a general onslaught on the students
by the repressive forces:
"The police attacked the students striking in both Tehran University
and Amir Abaad campus at 7 p.m. Ministry of Intelligence and Ansaar forces
in plainclothes entered the main campus, and Disciplinary Forces supported
them. (Unofficial reports say it was under an order from the Interior Ministry
and the National Security Council with the permission of Khatami.)
"They tried to disperse the students but they were not successful.
Students gathered again, and the university turned to a scene of war. ...
The whole university is going into flames! More than 500 people are injured
lately! Witnesses say that the streets were filled with tear gas so that
it was hard for everybody to breathe....
"The crowd is going upward from Jamalzadeh street to attack the
security forces from behind! They are burning tires to disinfect the tear
gases, while the students and their professors who joined their strike are
going to be cornered in Tehran University's mosque!
"In North Amir Abaad Street, 10 rows of armed forces are going upward
and have occupied the whole street."
Although Khatami turned against the student protesters, the frightened
conservatives decided to turn on him and put an end to any notions about
liberalizing the regime.
The Paris daily Le Monde reported July 29: "A new wave of arrests
of dissidents was announced on July 26 by the intelligence services. The
day before, two people close to the reformist president Mohammad Khatami
were sentenced for disturbing the peace."
"On July 5, a special clerical tribunal found the editor of Salaam,
Mohammad Mossavi-Kheoiniha, guilty of disinformation, slander, and publishing
a confidential document. ... The document in question revealed that Said
Emami, the main one responsible for the murder of dissidents on Nov. 12,
1998 ... who had held an important post in the Ministry of Intelligence,
had advocated gagging the liberals."
"Also, the editors of two conservative papers, Keyhan and Javan,
were indicted after the Ministry of Culture made a complaint against them
for publishing an "ultraconfidential" document-that is, the letter
signed by 24 officials of the Guardians of the Revolution warning Khatami
that they were at the end of their patience because of the disorders."
The response of the right has been to launch a general campaign of intimidation
that the liberal Khatami has neither the stomach nor the power to stand
up to. This right-wing offensive, however, can hardly eliminate the contradictions
that are undermining the regime. It will probably only make them more explosive.
It seems that the Islamic Republic cannot stabilize itself by liberalizing,
that nothing but a mass explosion can eliminate the barriers to progress.
Socialist Action /August 1999 |