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Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Nov. 27 – Several
anti-government student protests erupted in the Iranian capital on Sunday
in response to an increasingly harsher government crackdown on campus
activists.
Students at the University
of Tehran refused to
attend classes in the morning and gathered outside the campus library to
demonstrate against the appointment of a cleric as the new chief of the
university. Ayatollah Amid Zanjani, a notorious
religious prosecutor in the 1980s, was installed on Sunday as the new
university chancellor. His predecessor, an academic, expressed surprise at
“the unprecedented haste over the transition”.
The students chanted, “Appointed head, resign now!” and “Even if we
students die, we will not accept humiliation”.
As protests got heated several students pushed the ayatollah and threw his
turban off his head.
Iran’s
Education Minister Mohammad-Mehdi Zahedi told state television that Zanjani’s
appointment was carried out in the framework of the law and under the
provisions he had as minister.
Meanwhile, in Amir Kabir University,
some 2,000 students rallied against the recent increased government
security protocols being run on campus.
Several students who took over the university podium and addressed fellow
demonstrators blamed the government for tightening their controls on
student actions, and said that on campus security offices had been set up.
Demonstrators also called for an end to indiscriminately suspensions being
issued to vocal anti-government students.
Separately, a protest was held by students outside the Economics Department
of Allameh Tabatabai
University, but was quickly forced back by State Security Forces who
prevented demonstrators to move into the main university gates.
There were chants of “They don’t let students into the university” by
protestors.
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