US Accused Of Stirring Up
Student Protests In Iran
By Justin Huggler
Independent
16 June 2003
Protests against the mullahs' rule spread across Iran yesterday, despite violence from pro-regime militants who smashed their way into university dormitories and attacked students. The attacks left at least one person dead in the southern city of Shiraz.The United States, which has called for a change of government in Iran, spoke out at the weekend in support of the protesters. Iran accused America of meddling in its internal affairs and deliberately stirring up the protests.
But the students leading the protests chanted yesterday: "This is a student movement, not an American movement," according to the Iran Student News Agency.
Political change has always come from the universities in Iran. There is a great hunger for change among Iran's huge young population, tired of living under the mullahs' oppressive rule and frustrated by the reformist President Mohammad Khatami's failure to persuade the conservatives, who still hold the power, to change.
In an unexpected development yesterday, the Iranian authorities put the blame for the weekend's violence on the hardline militants who support the mullahs' rule and are believed to take their orders from senior figures inside the regime. Police began arresting dozens of militants.
There is no doubt that the protests are what America wants. The neo-conservatives around President George Bush would dearly like to see a change of government in Iran. Whether Washington is contemplating military action is not clear. But some have been talking up the possibility of fomenting change through internal dissent while keeping Iran in a stranglehold between American troops in Afghan-istan and Iraq.
Ari Fleischer, President Bush's spokesman, said on Saturday: "Iranians, like all people, have a right to determine their own destiny and the United States supports their aspirations to live in freedom." President Bush said of the protests: "I think freedom is a powerful incentive. I believe that someday freedom will
prevail everywhere, because freedom is a powerful drive."The protests in Tehran were more muted on Saturday night and Sunday morning, with many protesters preferring to stay in the relative safety of their cars, after the full details emerged of a bloody night in the capital on Friday. Pictures of broken doors and blood-smeared walls appeared on student-run websites. One student, Mojtaba Najai, said: "We were sleeping. Suddenly we heard windows being smashed. It was the most brutal way of attacking a human being. They beat up the guard before entering our dormitory. They see no borders, no limits."
The protests, and accompanying violence, are spreading. Ali Moini, a student, was reportedly stabbed to death in Shiraz, and a university dormitory was set alight in Esfahan.
The authorities' decision to go after the militants was a surprise. Often described as "vigilantes", they are in fact closely allied to hardliners within the Iranian regime. Some believe they take their orders from the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. One of those arrested was believed to be Saeed Ashgar, a militant leader involved in the shooting of Saeed Hajjarian, a leading reformer, two years ago.
* The European Union will harden its line against Iran today, saying that Tehran must "urgently and unconditionally" accept tougher inspections of its suspect nuclear programme, as a precondition of a trade deal. The move marks a departure from the EU's earlier emphasis on dialogue.