Students In Iran Carry Protests’ Torch Amid Heavy Crackdowns
Students at different universities across Iran held sit-ins on Saturday amid increasing pressure on activists on campuses after almost three months of unrest.
Students at different universities across Iran held sit-ins on Saturday amid increasing pressure on activists on campuses after almost three months of unrest.
The protesters at universities demanded the release of imprisoned students, lifting of harassment against others and slammed the execution of the 23-year-old protester Mohsen Shekari.
In Tehran’s Beheshti University they held a protest rally in silence amid the strong presence of plainclothes regime agents and security forces.
Reports from Allameh University in Tehran say over 100 students have been banned from entering the campus after they called for a protest over the suspicious death of their colleague, Shahabuddin Hashemi.
The hanged body of Shahabuddin Hashemi was found in the dormitory of Allameh University on Thursday, but state media claimed he committed suicide as a result of his mental problems.
However, his brother, Mehdi Hashemi denied the claims on social media as “dirty lies”, saying his brother's “suspicious murder” is reported as a “fake suicide by legal authorities.”
In western city of Sanandaj, security forces attacked protesting students at a technical college while the female students were setting fire to the Islamic Republic’s flag.
Security forces have repeatedly raided campuses and faced off with student protesters. Over 140 universities have been the scene of anti-regime protests nationwide and nearly 600 students have been detained as of Thursday, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
Amnesty said it had identified 13 cases in which security forces had “subjected them to coercion including arbitrary arrest and detention” or had made “ threats to bury the bodies of their loved ones in [an] unidentified location.” There had also been “been threats to kill, rape, detain or otherwise harm bereaved parents and their surviving children.”
Forty-four under-18s – children and teenagers had been killed either as protestors or bystanders, the group said Friday. This was 14 percent of a total 300 deaths Amnesty refers to, a figure that appeared not to include the 61 dead members of security forces or state employees given by Norway-based group HRANA this week. HRANA put the number of dead protestors at 475.
Of the 44 under-18s killed, said Amnesty 18 were Baluchi, of which 13 were killed on September 30 in Zahedan, when violence broke out around a Sunni mosque. Ten of the under 18s were Kurds. Over half therefore – 60 percent – were from the most restive parts of Iran, where non-Persians are also part of the minority Sunni sect. The other 16 were killed in six provinces elsewhere in Iran.
Amnesty quoted a relative of a young person killed in Sistan-Baluchistan province saying the testimonies of witnesses were deemed “worthless” as Baluchis were not considered human. In nine cases of under-18s killed in Sistan-Baluchistan, Iran has told the United National Human Rights Council there was no record of their deaths.
Victims overwhelmingly male
The 44 under-18 victims verified by Amnesty were overwhelmingly (39) male, with the youngest aged two. Of the five females, one was 17, three 16, and one aged six. Thirty-four were shot with live ammunition, four killed by metal pellets, “five died from injuries consistent with fatal beatings, and one girl was killed after being struck on the head with a tear gas canister.”
Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said a UN fact-finding mission on authorities’ actions during the protests, set up in November, should lead “all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to criminally investigate Iranian officials involved in militarized attacks on demonstrators, including children.”
Javaid Rahman, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, has also called for the application of universal jurisdiction against individuals by both national and international courts. But there is widespread international skepticism of the UN probe, partly due to its main sponsor the US having a long history of opposition to international jurisdiction, and little expectation it will lead to judicial proceedings.
Immunity to prosecution?
While Washington had levied further sanctions on Iran over ‘human rights,’ it has long refused to join the International Criminal Court. The Biden administration recently told a US court that Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, believed by US intelligence to have ordered the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, is “immune from prosecution” as Saudi prime minister.
Twitter posts Friday alleged attendance was restricted at the funeral of a 23-year-old man hanged in Iran the previous day after conviction in a Revolutionary Court over a knife attack on a member of a Basji security group. Social media also carried footage said to be people in the man’s neighborhood chanting they would “kill the one who killed out brother” and threatening the death of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader.
Security forces Friday attacked protesters marching in silence in Kermanshah, capital of a province of the same name in western Iran, and in Podol, a village of 1,200 near Bandar Lengeh in southern Hormozgan Province, where the locals have been protesting almost every night, and fired at them in both places.
In Tehran protesters gathered in smaller groups in different neighborhoods, and chanted slogans on the streets or from their windows. Young protesters who had gathered outside Shekari’s home and lit candles in his memory were also attacked and beaten up.
Smaller protests were also held in Karaj, capital of Alborz Province only half an hour from the capital. “They took our Mohsen away, they brought back his lifeless body,” protesters chanted in Karaj where five other protesters have apparently received the same sentence as Shekari, the death sentence.
“Five were sentenced to death for the killing of one Basiji. One was executed for injuring a Basiji. No one was held accountable for the killing of hundreds of citizens. No one was held accountable for killing thousands in the protests in the past few years. This regime has taken justice and freedom to the slaughterhouse,” a tweet posted with the photos of the five sentenced to death in Karaj said Saturday.
These include three young teenagers-- Hossein Mohammadi, Hamid Ghara Hasanlou, and Mohammad-Mehdi Karami as well as Reza Aria, a middle-aged radiologist, a fifth person whose name has not been publicly announced.
On November 30, these individuals and eleven others were put on trial for allegedly beating Rouhollah Ajamian, a Basij paramilitary member to death during a protest in Karaj a month earlier. The five sentenced to death have been charged with “corruption on earth” for “acting against national security, attacking Basij and police members” resulting in Ajamian’s death.
Like Shekari, some of the accused were deceived into admitting crimes they had not committed or tortured into making self-incriminating confessions which were then aired by the state television. Reportedly, dozens more have similarly been charged with “waging war against God” and “corruption on earth” which carry the death sentence.
Prominent journalist Abbas Abdi in a commentary published by the reformist Etemad newspaper Saturday argued that Shekari’s execution could not be attributed to the implementation of the law, as he was very hastily tried in a closed court and without access to a lawyer of his choice, and his sentence was carried out within less than three weeks, which is very much out of the ordinary.
According to Abdi, by executing Shekari the authorities were either trying to “set an example for others or utilize the element of fear as a deterrent” and may also have been sending the message that there will be nosympathy and leniency and authorities are determined “to execute and eliminate” despite the claims that they wanted to hear the protesters’ message.
Abdi wrote that this could be “catastrophic” even if the execution radicalized ten percent of the protesters who can resort to violent methods.
There have been calls on social media for further protests Saturday afternoon in various cities to honor those killed in the protests, now nearly 500, and Shekari who was the first protester known to be executed.