|
The Guardian
Robert Tait in Tehran
 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is cracking
down on Iran's
universities in an effort to crush a student pro-democracy movement and strengthen
the hardliners' grip on power.
Leading student activists have been jailed or expelled from their studies,
and lecturers have been sacked, while the government has proposed subjecting
academics to strict religious testing.
The authorities have also begun a programme of
burying the bodies of unknown soldiers on campus grounds in what student
leaders say is a thinly disguised attempt to bring religious extremists into
the universities on the pretext of holding "martyrs' ceremonies". Students
fear that such a presence will be used to violently suppress their
activities.
In one recent incident students at Tehran's Sharif
University were
attacked by plain-clothed Basij (religious
volunteers) during an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the burial of three
soldiers from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war inside the campus mosque. The
incident was overseen by Mehrdad Bazrpash, a close aide to Mr Ahmadinejad and a former Basij
leader.
The event took place against a backdrop of speeches by Mr
Ahmadinejad, a former university lecturer,
stressing the need for "martyrdom" in Iran's confrontation with the
west over its nuclear programme.
Student leaders say the developments amount to a takeover of the universities
by Mr Ahmadinejad's
ultra-conservative forces. The campuses were hotbeds of pro-democratic
protest during the presidency of the former, reformist leader, Mohammad Khatami. "They want to gain hegemonic control over
the universities, which have always been important in influencing the social
and political atmosphere and which normally support pro-democracy rather than
authoritarian forces," said Abdollah Momeni, an activist appealing against a five-year
sentence imposed for leading a student protest.
"Through burying martyrs on campus they open the doors for the entry of
armed militias and thus add the universities to their fiefdoms."
Other activists have had their studies terminated after the intervention of Iran's
intelligence services. Students also say they have been denied permission for
low-level political activities that were allowed during Mr
Khatami's presidency.
The purge has extended to academics and university administrators. One
political science lecturer was dismissed for belonging to a human rights
group.
The chancellor of Tehran's Science and Industry University resigned in protest at
government interference. Mr Ahmadinejad
has also been accused of overturning an established practice of appointing
chancellors and faculty heads from academic staff in favour
of trusted cronies. A radical cleric was recently appointed to head Tehran University.
|