Iran jails dissident student leader

LONDON, September 27 (IranMania) - Iranian dissident student leader Ali Afshari has been sentenced to six years in jail for "attacking national security", a source close to him said.

He was also sentenced to five years deprivation of civic rights, which bars him from holding any official post, such as teaching, as well as public speaking.

The activist, a member of a pro-reform student movement known as the Office to Consolidate Unity, has spent three years behind bars since 2000 including one year in solitary confinement.

In 2001, Afshari appeared on Iranian state television confessing to a plot to overthrow the clerical regime and apologising to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for his "mistakes".

Afshari was among several dissidents who drew the ire of Iranian authorities by taking part in an academic and cultural conference in Berlin in April 2000.

Political and social reforms in Iran were publicly debated at the conference, held at the Heinrich Boell Institute and called "Iran After the Elections", referring to the then newly elected reformist-dominated parliament.

Iranian state television aired footage of the conference, which was frequently interrupted by Iranian exiled dissidents who slammed the clerical regime.

Afshari was among several dissidents who drew the ire of Iranian authorities by taking part in an academic and cultural conference in Berlin in April 2000. Political and social reforms in Iran were publicly debated at the conference, held at the Heinrich Boell Institute and called "Iran After the Elections", referring to the then newly elected reformist-dominated parliament. Iranian state television aired footage of the conference, which was frequently interrupted by Iranian exiled dissidents who slammed the clerical regime.

”Substantive debate??? Dissidents??? Oh nooo...” Dictators and theocrats can't tolerate such misbehavior! These days, Iran is a state ruled not by law but by ideological elitism where ideas kill faster than bullets. “Oh nooo... to jail with those who think freely! Death to them all, they are terrorists and traitors!" so says these backward regimes and backward minds. But the oppressive rule they invest in, with hopes of peace and security, will only guarantee the exact opposite.

Oppression breeds revolution and war. Only the politically immature and naïve believe otherwise. History is our professor in this regard yet it repeats the same bloody lesson over and over again, as if humans are incapable of learning anything. Maybe the explanation is simpler than my grand metaphor. I assert that those who do regard the lessons of unbiased history have but one alternative; to be patient with those who don’t.

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