Iran students rally for free speech, prisoners
MSNBC
By Parisa Hafezi
TEHRAN, Dec. 7 — Around 1,000 pro-reform students rallied in the Iranian capital on Sunday calling for freedom of speech and the release of political prisoners, witnesses said.
The protesters in Tehran chanted ''Free all political prisoners'' and ''Death to despotism'' on the annual Student Day, which marks the death of three students during a protest against former U.S. President Richard Nixon's Iran visit in 1970.
Students have been at the forefront of protests against the Islamic Republic's clerical establishment in recent years, often clashing with hardline vigilantes loyal to conservative clerics opposed to any watering down of Iran's Islamic system.
Dozens of students have been arrested during major street protests in recent years.
Under tight police security, protesters inside the Tehran University campus on Sunday carried pictures of their jailed classmates.
Students played a crucial part in President Mohammad Khatami's landslide win over his conservative rivals in 1997 and his re-election in 2001 on a platform of liberal political and social reforms.
But angry at Khatami's non-confrontational approach and advocacy of gradual change in Iran, the country's biggest student movement, the Office to Consolidate Unity, has withdrawn its influential political support for Khatami and his allies.
''Reformists used our votes as a political tool and in return we got broken promises. They forgot us,'' Matin Meshkini, a student leader, told Reuters.
Khatami's reformist government and the pro-reform parliament have experienced stiff opposition to change from powerful hardliners who control key unelected bodies within the political system such as the judiciary and the Guardian Council constitutional watchdog.
Khatami's reformist movement faces a key test of its support in parliamentary elections in February.
''Khatami and his allies will not receive our support due to Khatami's failure to use the opportunities to push the reforms ahead,'' Meshkini said.
But some political analysts say the student movement, one of the most powerful voting blocks in Iran where around 70 percent of the 66 million population is under 30 years old, may not remain out of the political fray for long.
''The student movement might enter the race at the last minute. Like the rest of people, they are not predictable,'' said Hamid Reza Jalaipour, a political analyst.
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