ARE STUDENTS MANIPULATED?
“The rally
organized in front of University of … on …[date] by a group
of students studying at different universities in Iran who
came to protest the Iranian Administration for the pressure
and arrests inflicted upon the university students…”
The phrase
above is a repeated headline frequently observed in the
media both in Iran and abroad. These young people, put
through such massive violence, detention and arrest and
expelled from their schools, for what do they endure to pay
such high costs?
Let’s look
at what Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence has to say about the
student protests, an event closely monitored by the Iranian
society… In their various statements, the mouthpieces of the
regime utter phrases like “The enemies of the regime pick up
non-students who are steered by external forces, from
various cities to drive them into organizing protests … A
majority of these people have been arrested. Thus, the plot
designed by Iran’s enemies has been spoiled.” which always
prompts reaction from the public. That’s because the
ordinary man is extremely irritated by such statements which
depict the university students, the heirs of our future, as
“unwitting puppets”.
The
frequent recurrence of student protests throughout the
country obviously raises some questions as to the possible
existence of certain provocative interferences. Yet, it
would be totally unjust for the students and Iranian people
to accept as such the reasoning employed by the Mullah
regime to rationalize the events which argues that “the
whole blame should be laid on foreign powers.” Acknowledging
this logic will mean to confirm that “the students who are
deprived of common sense are manipulated in this game and
play the major role in the plot designed to bring down the
regime” and that is an absolutely unacceptable insult.
We hereby
speak to Ahmadinejad regime... We, the ordinary people, the
students, the labourers, the civil servants…all who are fed
up with the regimes’ pressure…We, Our South Azerbaijan, sons
of this nation, refuse to submit to such an insult and call
the Ahmadinejad regime “not to destroy, ruin, attack or
imprison but to contemplate…to first look into the factors
that unsettle Iranian students and then to develop measures
to fix it.”
In the
statement made by Naser Zarafshan who agreed to legally
represent the arrested students, it said “The Ministry of
Intelligence which refuses to give out the names of arrested
students, detain them in Evin Prison together with other
political convicts and deny them the right to consult to
their lawyers declared that the arrested persons were not
students. Our people believe that this statement of the
Ministry is an argument long exploited by the state when the
circumstances oblige to hush up. Our people know very well
that ‘these efforts expended in search of the traitors who
are steered by external forces’ do not mean anything.”
As the Our
South Azerbaijan group, we believe that it is our duty to
once again warn the ruling powers to stay away from such
dangerous games here and now, just when the country is
passing through critical times.
