Iranian students have stepped up their protests in the face of a crackdown by security forces who reportedly cornered and shot dead 12 students at a prestigious Tehran university on Sunday night.
Anti-government protests, sparked by the death of a young woman in police custody in mid-September, have spread across the country in varying degrees of intensity, exposing a cultural divide between the country’s educated youth and the older male religious establishment.
In his first remarks on the protests, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave strong support to security forces and accused the US and Israel – the Islamic Republic’s main opponents – of orchestrating the unrest. “If there was no problem with the death of the young woman, they would have used another pretext to cause unrest and riots at this time,” Khamenei said.
Concerns have grown since the latest violence at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, where local media said riot police confronted hundreds of students, with officers using tear gas and paintball guns and carrying non-lethal steel pistols. Many students were arrested and taken away in police cars or ambulances as parents and others came to their rescue.
“Woman, life, freedom,” students shouted, as well as “students prefer death to humiliation,” Mehr news agency reported, adding that Iran’s Science Minister Mohammad Ali Zolfigol had come to address the students in an attempt to calm the situation.
The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights released a video that apparently shows Iranian motorcycle police chasing students running through an underground parking lot and, in a separate clip, taking away detainees whose heads are covered with black cloth bags.
Other footage, which has not been independently confirmed, shows gunfire and screaming as large numbers of people run down a street at night. In one clip, which the IHR said was taken at a Tehran metro station, a crowd can be heard chanting: “Don’t be afraid! Do not be afraid! We’re all in this together!’
The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said it was “extremely disturbed by videos released today from Sharif University and Tehran showing violent crackdowns on protests and detainees being dragged away with their heads completely covered in cloth.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told army cadets in Tehran on Monday that the US and Israel were responsible for the protests. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Cyber attacks against websites of government institutions, including the judiciary, continued on Monday after reports of lawyers being detained and arrested. However, students were out again in large numbers in Tehran and Isfahan. Despite efforts by Iranian authorities to prevent students from using social media to tell the world about the protests, pictures show large crowds gathering.
“What is happening at Sharif University in Iran is hard to bear,” German Foreign Minister Analena Berbock tweeted on Monday. “The courage of the Iranians is incredible. And the brute force of the regime is an expression of pure fear of the power of education and freedom.”
Meena, a student, said, “We are going through the worst form of police violence. We will not tolerate their restrictions and we will not adhere to the regime’s strict dress code. This is our life and we have a choice.
“I have seen corpses on the streets and roads and we will not let their blood go to waste. The future of students under this regime is targeting, committing violence and killing with bullets and direct fire; our future is bleak under this regime, we will fight against them.
Education union leaders have called for a nationwide strike by teachers and students in response to Sunday’s violence.
Security forces and politicians appear to believe they have public support for crackdowns, but risk antagonizing a fatalistic or fearful older middle class. Many of the older middle class, schooled in previous protest defeats and squeezed by economic sanctions, have refrained from participating in the latest protests because they see no point in trying to force the government to change its thinking.
Sunday’s session of Iran’s parliament showed little willingness to compromise on the mandatory hijab or the methods of Iran’s morality police, the two main causes of the protests.
The focus was instead on the role of foreign media and agents, as well as Iranian celebrities, in allegedly fueling the protests. Iran’s foreign ministry said it had sent serious warnings to some countries that they were hosting “lie factories”, a reference to the widely watched news channels broadcasting in Iran.
The protests began in response to the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman of Iranian origin who was detained for allegedly violating strict dress codes.
A group of female inmates at Tehran’s Evin prison issued a statement in support of the students. “Our hearts, our cries and our fists are with the hearts and cries of the people every moment,” they said.
Former footballers also continued to support the protesters, including Mehdi Mahdavikia, the 2003 Asian Footballer of the Year, who wrote on social media: “For several decades, by oppressing students and beating them at every opportunity, you have turned Iran into an elite and national capital flees. Important posts are in the hands of illiterate people.
Ali Karimi, who played 127 times for the Iran national football team, also supported the protesters.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
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