Regards, Ivan
Posted on 11/20/2002 4:53:37 PM PST by MadIvan
It is a sign of how nervous the Iranian authorities are becoming after a dozen days of student protests, that a small gaggle of middle-aged monarchists in central Tehran can trigger a full-scale police alert.
Scores of police, some in riot gear, encircled Revolution Square late on Tuesday, moving pedestrians on and even using a vacated bank premises as a temporary lock-up.
The dozen or so matronly monarchists, some of them mothers of demonstrating students, are becoming a familiar sight at Tehrans hot-spots.
But so far they are the only ones answering the rather plaintive and ineffectual appeals by opposition satellite television stations, based in the US, for the Iranian people to take to the streets against their Islamic regime. Nonetheless, while the Iranian people are watching from the sidelines, it is becoming evident that campus rallies across the country are entering a new and more radical stage. The outcome, politicians warn, could be dangerous.
Pressure from hardliners on the students to give up their protests is being brought to bear from all sides, but it has only encouraged a radical few.
The hardline judiciary, which triggered the protests by sentencing to death an outspoken academic for apostasy, has ordered local journalists not to give detailed reports on the campus demos.
Mustafa Moin, minister for higher education, has bowed to the conservatives and urged the students to relent.
IRIB, the state broadcaster also controlled by hardliners, has its own spin, reporting on "illegal gatherings" by "so-called students".
These vented their anger at Modarres University, where the condemned academic, Hashemi Aghajari, used to teach, by setting upon an IRIB cameraman, ripping open his tape and sending the contents flying like a streamer.
But more serious pressure is coming from increasing acts of violence against students by the Basij, an Islamist militia, and the shadowy hardmen of Ansar-e-Hezbollah who ride unchallenged on motorbikes without licence plates.
Students at Tehran's Allameh Tabatabayi University on Wednesday abandoned a planned rally when they found extremists waiting for them.
This week, hardliners have attacked and broken up rallies in several cities, including Tehran, Ahwaz and Yassuj. Several students have landed in hospital. A pro-reform MP was also assaulted.
Police forces, which have stayed mainly neutral, are showing less interest in protecting students, turning a blind eye when thugs set upon demonstrators returning home from their campuses.
About 1,500 students affiliated to the Basij held their own counter-rally in Tehran University on Tuesday in support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader who has come under fire from the reformist students.
The Basiji students did not impress with their numbers, bused in from different colleges, but the message was blunt, a language of religious commitment, of threats, and warnings of collusion by foreign enemies.
"Martyrdom is our honour," bearded men chanted from the right, echoed by ranks of women wrapped in black chadors, segregated to the left.
If the relevant ministers or university chancellors did not restore campus order, their statement said, then the Basijis would.
"Our red line is the Leadership," proclaimed Mohammad Sarshar from the podium, referring to Ayatollah Khamenei.
"The world should know that breaking these lines will cost a huge price."
Conservatives are frustrated that pro-reform rallies have continued, despite the supreme leaders attempt to restore calm by ordering the judiciary to review Mr Aghajaris sentence. But at the same time as the Basijis were gathering, reformists at Modarres University were taking up even more radical chants, criticising the supreme leader, but also Mohammad Khatami, the moderate president whose public silence has angered once faithful supporters.
"Khatamis silence is treason for the nation," some shouted.
Mr Khatami has been unable to capitalise on the student movement, to push through his own stalled agenda of political reforms, out of fear that hardliners would stage a repeat of their bloody crackdown on student protests in 1999, which led to widespread rioting.
The sense of looming confrontation is seen in changing dress-codes. Some of the young men and women have donned rebellious-looking headbands and mask their faces. In a way, it is a piece of theatre and they know that their numbers are relatively small 5,000 or so at the biggest rally to date but the radical intent is there.
Abdullah Momeni, a member of the central council of the Office to Foster Unity (OFU), the main student union, is concerned that events are moving out of control.
"I think if the pressures continue like this, then student actions will get more radical and will not follow a logical path anymore," he told the FT. "They are creating an intimidating atmosphere to push the student movement back to its passivity. These sort of things will not be useful for them. Yesterday at Modarres you saw that despite all the restrictions, students jumped over the fences to get in and the slogans were more radical than before."
The weakness of the OFU, which has not recovered from the arrest of its leaders and the 1999 summer of repression, has led to a lack of coordination and clarity in the protests. The OFU demands Mr Aghajaris unconditional release from prison, but other students insist all political prisoners be freed and have extended the agenda to political reform in general.
At the same time, the lack of central leadership has given the movement more vitality, especially in the provinces. Mohammad-Reza Khatami, brother of the president and leader of the largest parliamentary party, has also warned conservatives that students are losing hope in "the system", coded language meaning the debate is shifting away from religious dictatorship versus religious democracy, to one of theocracy versus secularism.
Nonetheless, the clerics in control are signalling that a crackdown is in the making. National Basij week kicks off with a march on Saturday outside the former US embassy. Martyrdom in the defence of Islam is their motto.
Regards, Ivan
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