"Claims of student massacre spread" Robert Fisk (iran)

[Kurska]

"Tehran University looked as calm as any summer campus. So much for the latest rumours of a bloodbath. Another piece of Iranian fiction, served up on YouTube. Scarved female students were moving through the university's great black iron gates. I asked my driver, Ali, to drop me off at the corner so I could prowl the college bookshops on Engelob Street, I was looking for a volume of modern Persian poetry for a friend. I did not at first hear the man at the cash desk, motioning out the door.

I peered out. The gates of the university were now shut. Behind them was a crowd of hundreds of young men and women, many wearing scarves over their mouths. I crossed the road. And the banners behind those forbidding gates told a frightening story. "Today is a day of mourning," one of them read. "Dignified students are mourners today." "Police, shame on you, shame on you." "Tell my mother – she doesn't have a son any more."

I walked up to the gate. Young female students were crying. So were some of the young men. "We don't want a government by coup," another poster read. "Tehran University dormitory has been coloured with students' blood," another said."

More at source ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/claims-of-student-massacre-spread-1706011.html )

[elleng]

1. Campus power: Student demonstrations hold key.

By Adrian Hamilton

cont'd from above.

*A co-ordinated series of demonstrations by students in all the major cities of Iran throughout 1978 were instrumental in bringing down the Shah in early 1979.

It is difficult to know whether they will be able to keep up their resistance this time, but their position could prove pivotal. Iran is a young country with half its population under 25. It is also unique in its proportion of women in higher education, at 60 per cent.

For the last four years, it has been Iran's campuses that have raised the standard of rebellion, demanding freedom of expression and relief from conservative rules on dress and behaviour, only to be put down with increasing severity and considerable bloodshed. Demonstrations were held in 20 centres last summer, while Tehran students held a series of protests directly attacking President Ahmadinejad as a "tyrant" last autumn in which there were several deaths.

The protests have already started again in Tehran's huge campus, but the authorities will be especially concerned if this starts spreading – as it seemed to be doing last summer – at which time Isfahan and Ahwaz were particular hotspots.

If rumours of student deaths and violent suppression start spreading, an uprising could be difficult to control