June 16, 2008

Thousands of Iranian Students Protest University Official's Behavior

Thousands of students protested this weekend at a university in northwestern Iran over the alleged sexual harassment of a female student by the university’s vice chancellor.

According to reports by Agence France-Presse and Reuters, two news agencies, the reformist Iranian newspaper Etemad reported today that students at Zanjan University broke into the vice chancellor’s office, handed the official over to the university’s security officers, and proceeded to stage a sit-in on Saturday night in a campus athletics facility.

“The vice chancellor is alleged to have sexually harassed the girl while she was in his office to resolve a problem with the committee of conduct — a disciplinary body which monitors students’ activities,” Agence France-Presse reported.

The official had reportedly attempted on several occasions to close the university’s student Islamic association by accusing its members of moral misbehavior.

The episode is noteworthy because, although Iranian students have long been a catalyst for wider social and political activism in the country, in recent months a government crackdown has effectively curtailed the student movement.

In the most high-profile recent episode, three students at Amir Kabir University of Technology, in Tehran, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was greeted with protests during a 2006 visit, were sentenced to jail — where they remain — for publishing supposedly un-Islamic images in student publications. —Aisha Labi

Comments

1. Regarding the last two paragraphs of the article:

   Consider for a moment the insulting personal attacks on our President and Vice President that we regularly see in these blogs. Consider the fact that we have a late night TV celebrities who consistently ridicule our president just to get laughs. Finally, consider the fact that we are in the midst of a presidential election campaign which will see the planned, peaceful transfer of power from our current presdient to another – who will likely suffer the same abuse by the media for the next four years (try doing your job with that kind of distraction going on all around you, 24/7). Then think about those students in Iran who remain in jail for “publishing supposedly un-Islamic images in student publications.”

   In the United States you can say anything you want to, any way you want to, any time you want to, regardless of it’s appropriateness. You can even publicly lie about someone and get away with it most of the time, because the burden of proof of slander is on the person who was slandered, and the standard of proof is high. You can even engage in “free speech” that supports the cause of those who wish to destroy us, because the Constitution was specifically written to allow that. No one comes and hauls you away to jail for doing these things.

   I am thankful that I was born and raised here and not in Iran.

   — FB    Jun 17, 12:26 PM    #

2. Yes, it sure is nice to have been born in the USA, because if we had been born in Iran, our democratically elected prime minister would have been overthrown by a coup in 1953 funded and staged by the CIA, returning to power a tyrannical dictator-monarch who brutally repressed his people through the infamous (and US trained) secret police, Savak, setting us back decades (or who knows how much longer it will be) in our efforts to build a democratic society.

   — CB    Jun 18, 04:57 PM    #

3. FB-and your point is? And the point of saying other countries are barbaric is? Do you also walk around in your daily life saying “Thank goodness I’m smarter than you.” or “Thank goodness I haven’t been exploited by people or a nation more powerful than me and mine, unlike you.” Is that how you conduct yourself in public? Instead, why wouldn’t we just gather and marvel at the profound courage of those students, courage that I wonder if you or I would have were we in their shoes…

   — Sean    Jun 18, 11:49 PM    #

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