Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Polytechnic Students Hiding in Fear of their Life

When former Iranian president Khatami visited Britain, he wooed his gullible audiences, describing how Iranian students heckled and jeered him with no consequence, during his visit to the Tehran university on National Student Day.
“No where in the Middle East, do the students have the privilege of criticizing their president so vociferously” Khatami lied through his teeth to the delight of his ignorant and out of touch with reality UK academics.

Yet the real truth was that the students faced no consequences on the day, but after the foreign press had forgotten about the incident, the university’s disciplinary committee identified and summoned the ringleaders of the incident.
Farid Yekani from the Political Sciences and Law Faculty, Pooya Heybatollahi and Iman Amir-Teimur from Literature and Humanities Faculty, Maziar Firuzmand from Arts Faculty and Salman Rasuli from Agriculture and Natural Resources Faculty were amongst some of the students who paid the price for heckling the "reformist president" and his cunning smiles.

Similarly this year, Ahmadi-Nejad tried to score a political point on how democratic Islamic Republic is, by saying that students can heckle the president and burn his pictures.

Luckily this time, there is a brilliant Guardian reporter by the name of Robert Tait, who unlike other foreign correspondents in Tehran, does not sit behind his/her desk waiting for official news to reach him. He actually goes out and finds the real news to report.

Just as I feared for the consequences of the brave student holding the placard "Fascist President, Polytechnic is not your place", Robert Tait reports
Iranian student activists who staged an angry protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week have gone into hiding in fear for their lives.

"The 21-year-old student holding the "fascist president" banner was among those threatened with expulsion. He is said to be in grave danger after foreign news outlets, including the Guardian, published a picture of his gesture. Friends say he went into hiding after being confronted by two vigilantes.

They said they would pull his father out of the grave [an ancient Persian threat]," said one student. "He is in real danger. Vigilantes have been standing at the dormitory doors asking for him.
" reports Robert Tait.

Well perhaps in a few years time when some British university resembling Tom Sharpe's Kloone university, with academics resembling Walden Yapp or Porter House College Fellows, award Ahmadi-Nejad with an honourary PHD, they too will be delighted at how Ahmadi-Nejad will claim that he allowed students to heckle him, and become mesmerised by his condemnations of treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.

If these universities and academics had any sense and any courage however instead of awarding honours for the representatives of an anti-student religious apartheid, they would arrange scholarships for the students who are now in hiding or the Iranian students who have been suspended and threatened with expulsion for various political activities, including writing articles critical of the government.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

our students are brave

Anonymous said...

Excellent commentary regarding the gullibility of Western journalists buying and reporting the canned news manufactured by the Intelligence Minstry as real news.

Anonymous said...

Another brave journalist from ABC:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=2735129&page=1

Shahrokh said...

one of my friends was in during Polytechnic in that time, and unfortunately yesterday he lost and up to now no one know about him, lets pray for him.

Anonymous said...

اگر صد ويا هزار تن از دانشجويان معترض را هم دستگير کنند و به سياهچال بيندازند با هفتاد ميليون ايرانی معترض چه می خواهند بکنند؟ مگر با زندانی کردن دانشجويان نسل هژدهم تير جنبش جوانان ايران از بين رفت؟ مگر با به قتل رساندن اکبر محمدی دانشجويان خاموش شدند؟ آحوندها دلشان به چه خوش است؟ـ

Bahramerad said...

In IRI, You are free to speak about what ever you want and they call it `freedom of speech `
Then the next day, when they entertain you at the EVIN PRISON, that is called RE-EDUCATION / REPRESSION.
These things do exist in IRI.
But do you know the difference and does it MATTER?