Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Feb. 25 – Hundreds of students from Tehran's prestigious Polytechnic (Amirkabir) University rallied for a second day on Tuesday against an attempt by the authorities to bury on campus the remains of members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who died in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Authorities responded by raiding the homes of student activists and arresting several dozen vocal student activists.
The protests began initially on Monday when the authorities buried on campus five unidentified IRGC members killed more than 20 years ago. The students accused the regime of attempting to bring fundamentalist currents into the university.
Several hundred students gathered on Monday and Tuesday in Amirkabir, chanting "death to the dictator" and "we don't want a fascist regime". They called on the authorities to free fellow students who had been arrested over the past several months. They also demanded that members of the hard-line Bassij force, an off-shoot of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, be expelled from universities.
On Tuesday, State Security Forces (SSF) attacked the protestors, and according to several students, at least 25 of their classmates were taken away by police.
Several students, who said they were supporters of the People's Mujahedin Organisation of Iran, claimed that the SSF and intelligence ministry agents raided the homes of several Amirkabir students on Tuesday, arresting their classmates and transferring them to Ward 209 of Tehran's notorious Evin Prison.
Those arrested include Ahmad Qasaban, Nariman Mostafavi, Mehdi Mashayekhi and Abbas Hakim Zadeh.
Hossein Torkashvand, Majid Tavakoli, Esmail Salmanpour and Vahid Daneshyar are currently on hunger strike in Ward 209 of Evin, they said. All four, who were studying at Amirkabir, were detained on February 5 by intelligence ministry agents.
Students from the University of Tehran separately protested earlier this week outside the Faculty of Law against the government-orchestrated crackdown on Iranian universities.
