Saturday, August 09, 2008

Only in the Islamic Republic!

We all heard how the vice chancellor of Zanjan University, Hassan Madadi, was caught on camera, by students of Zanjan university, while abusing his position and trying to sexually assault a student girl who was due to appear before the university disciplinary committee.

A brave female student went against all the threats and intimidations of the so-called disciplinary committee and university authorities and refused to give in to their demands and instead helped gather evidence to prove the corruption and abusive action of the university vice-chancellor Hassan Madadi. The vice chancellor's demands for sex was caught on mobile cameras by the students who had been alerted by the female student and who burst into Madadi's office to save her. Tens of thousands of people saw the mobile phone video posted on YouTube showing students seizing him, turning him over to the authorities and demanding that he be charged. (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=01NPJ5McQW4)

The news outraged Zanjan university students and 3,000 took part in protests. A flood of solidarity and support came from other university students. The university authorities, who were in a weak position at the time, tried to end the protests by giving false promises to meet the students’ demand

Any where else in the world, the vice chancellor would have faced the most dire punishments and would have probably lost his job and his university career would have ended for good, but not in the Islamic Republic, which presents itself as the flagship of morality to the unaware admirers of itself.

Any where else in the world, the female student and the other students who stood up to the abuses of the vice chancellor, would have been commended, but this is the Islamic Republic of Iran, where thugs and criminals are in government and the 'useful idiots' around the world can't admire enough the meaningless rhetorics of these 'anti-imperialist' tyrants.

After the demonstrations ended and the university closed for the summer holidays, the Zanjan prosecutor announced that 'exposing a sin is worse than the sin itself!' and the woman student who dared expose this abusive official was herself arrested and accused of having an unlawful affair. The university Vice Chancellor has now been promoted and there is talk of whether the Sigheh, Shiite temporary marriage where a man can marry a woman for as short as an hour, prayer verses were read or not before the sexual demands were made by the chancellor.

Four of the students who took part in videoing the abuse and rescuing the girl, Payam Shakiba, Hassan Joneydi, Arash Rayeji and now Bahram Vahedi have also been arrested.

Similar events in other Islamic Republic universities of Sahand and Kermanshah have also resulted in the arrest of the students instead of the authorities who were abusing their position. This is the Islamic Republic!

I was speaking to a war veteran friend of mine in Iran recently, he was telling me he was going along with his daughter to the university to collect her loan cheque, 'I have to accompany her everywhere, you can not even trust the academics in this regime, we never thought our country would come to this when we were fighting the Iraqis'.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

thank you potkin jan. I'm fuming at this time and can't think straight. How could they come up with such ad hoc twisted reasonings?

serendip

Anonymous said...

U N B E L I E V A B L E!!!!!!!!!!!

Hanif Leylabi said...

I thought the apparent backing down of authorities was too good to be true. :-(

Azarmehr said...

Yes I suppose it was too good to be true but dont confuse Zanjan uni with the Teacher's Training College protests:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2008/06/total-victory-for-teacher-training.html

Although you never know, may be they will break their promises there too.

Anonymous said...

very similar to the situation of this girl who was raped, and then stoned to death after authorities found out she was raped

I dont understand how these people are allowed to run entire countries with their bogus laws =P