BY MA'MUD SHIRVANI
Students in Iran demonstrated in and around universities
for five days straight to defend democratic rights and to
oppose police brutality. They gained the support of working
people and forced government officials to promise to act on
their demands. These were the largest national protest
actions since Iran's revolution of 1979, when mass worker and
peasant struggles toppled the U.S.-backed monarchy.
Students started protesting July 8 after they found out the Tehran daily Salam, which supports President Mohammad Khatami, was shut down the previous day by order of the judiciary, which is under the control of the conservative wing of the regime. That evening some 200 students held a protest rally around Tehran University dormitories in Amirabad, located a few miles north of the university.
At the same time security forces, antiriot police, and extralegal thugs in civilian clothes began to assemble in the area trying to provoke a confrontation. Shortly after 3:00 a.m. they started firing tear gas and raided the dormitories without warning. They broke down bedroom doors, beating students indiscriminately and setting their rooms on fire. Tehran papers reported that some students were thrown from second- and third-floor windows. About 500 students were reportedly arrested; the number of injuries has not been announced.
Authorities have reported that one person, Ezzat Ibrahim- Nejad, was killed. He was a conscript soldier visiting a friend at the dormitory and had read a poem at the rally that evening. Ibrahim-Nejad's father, a peasant in Pole Dokhtar in the south, told reporters he first learned of his son's death on television along with everyone else in his town. Since then students have been coming to his house to extend their solidarity.
Protests spread across country
National radio and television did not publicize the
assault on Tehran students, but as the news spread by other
means, students in other cities began to organize protest
demonstrations. Some 5,000 students in the northern city of
Tabriz, in Azerbaijan, mobilized early in the morning July 11
demanding the immediate release of the students arrested in
Tehran. They also shouted, "Long live Khatami, down with the
dictator!" They were attacked by the same combination of
forces as the Tehran students, leading to injuries and the
death of an Islamic clerical student by unknown assailants
later in the day. These forces are usually spearheaded by a
group called Ansare Hezbollah (Supporters of the Party of
God).
The Tehran daily Neshat reported July 12 that people rallied to students' defense in defiance of the orders by security forces. The mass intervention brought down the tensions and further bloodshed was averted.
Student demonstrations of comparable size to those in Tabriz were held at the Ferdowsi University in Mashhad in the East, Urmia in the West, Kermanshah in Kurdistan, Isfahan, Shiraz Hamadan, Gilan south of the Caspian Sea, Zanjan, Ardabil in Azerbaijan, and in some smaller towns. Presidents of 30 universities around the country issued a statement protesting the violation of the sanctuary of universities by security forces and the trampling of students' rights.
The minister of culture and higher education resigned in protest. Ayatollah Khamenei, the head of state, and President Khatami both denounced the attack on the Tehran students. Even Ansare Hezbollah issued a curt statement denying their involvement in the July 9 raid.
Most of those assaulted at the Tehran university dormitory were students from outside Tehran. Many of them come from working-class and peasant families thanks to the 1979 revolution, which brought forth a certain degree of affirmative action in favor of working people. Papers reported that of some 500 students arrested during the assault in Tehran, at least 80 came from families of martyrs in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. In that war, volunteers from villages, working-class neighborhoods, and factories mobilized to go to the war front and defend the revolution against the military assault of the capitalist government of Iraq, which was launched with the complicity of Washington and imperialist powers. The Tehran daily Kar va Kargar (Work and Worker) quoted a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war at one of the rallies at Tehran university as saying, "They would tell us in the front to treat Iraqi prisoners of war with respect and kindness, but here they bloody the Iranian students and drag them to the ground."
As they marched to join students in the Amirabad dormitories for a sit-in July 11, students from other universities in Tehran chanted rhythmic slogans in Farsi patterned after slogans during the revolution: "Militant students, unity, unity!"; "Bats, clubs, and knives no longer intimidate us." In reference to the Ansare Hezbollah and the rightist 1973 coup in Chile led by Augusto Pinochet, they chanted, "Ansare Pinochet, can't turn Iran into Chile!"
Working people support students
Following the assault in the early hours of July 9,
students from around the city rushed to Amirabad and took
control of the dormitory complex. They organized checkpoints,
established security, and did not allow in any provocateurs
or government security forces. Thousands of working people
and students in Tehran and other cities converged there in
solidarity. Parents and family members even traveled from
other cities to be with the students. This prevented any
further assaults.
People came forward and took collections to help get food and other necessities for the students occupying the buildings and for those dormitory residents who had lost their belongings during the raid and fires set by the invaders. This buoyed the students' spirits. "We have not yet reached our goals; we want freedom of expression and will keep on till we get it," a student named Ahmad told the Tehran daily Khordad July 11.
"People are supporting us; they organize to get water and food for us. So long as we are on the right track we are confident they will support us." Ahmad, an accounting student at Roodhen Azad University on the north side of the Alborz mountains, had traveled to Tehran to join the students in struggle. This kind of relationship of the general population to demonstrators and strikers was established during the months of Iran's revolution of 1978-79.
The main student organization that called the protest demonstrations around the country and the Amirabad sit-ins and security was Daftare Tahkeem Vahdat (Center to Strengthen Unity.) It is based on Islamic Associations at the universities and its origins go back to the anti-imperialist students who occupied the U.S. embassy in November 1979. At the time the occupation was a protest against Washington's moves to organize a counterrevolutionary coup, as it had done in 1953 to defeat a democratic anti-imperialist movement and bring the shah (king) to power.
The occupation became a rallying point for workers and peasants to come back on the center stage of politics to defend the gains of the revolution. Tahkeem is supportive of Khatami and is also associated with the Khane Kargar (Workers' House) a pro-government umbrella organization of workers, an offshoot of the workers shoras (councils) formed during the revolution. Khane Kargar issued a statement in support of students.
Regime seizes on riots to clamp down
A split took place among the students July 12. Some
people, frustrated by the lack of decisive action from the
president and high levels of government in arresting and
prosecuting those responsible for the July 9 dormitory raid,
began to branch off to central points in the city. Petty-
bourgeois and bourgeois currents who favor the overthrow of
the government were included in this split. As they moved
through the streets they attracted others to these
demonstrations, which ended with attacking stores and
smashing windows and cars. Some banks were attacked and the
door of the Ministry of the Interior was set on fire.
Some unemployed youth angry with the capitalist government's unfulfilled promises to lift the "oppressed of the earth" were attracted to these demonstrations. A young man who had joined a demonstration of 500 roaming the city told a bystander, "I am unemployed. For 20 years they have been lying to us. I have come to give my life for them [the students]." He said he had earlier participated in the Islamabad riots. Islamabad is a district outside the Tehran city limits, mostly inhabited by newly arrived workers from the countryside. Tensions exploded there in 1995 when the gasoline prices and transportation costs were raised sharply. Cars were smashed and burned and security forces were attacked. Military units were brought in to beat and arrest the demonstrators.
Similar eruptions have taken place in other cities, always ending in defeat. In Tehran these demonstrators invariably clash with the security forces and Ansar, leading to victimizations. After July 12, Tahkeem pulled out of demonstrations and their character changed. Workers who had been supportive of the earlier student protests pulled back.
As events unfolded the conservative wing of the ruling class, which had been on the defensive since July 9, got wind in its sails and called for calm and unity. They took the propaganda offensive in the name of protecting the state.
Forces associated with this wing called a demonstration for July 14 and began to use their positions in the state apparatus to build it. The liberal wing associated with Khatami went along. Governmental ministries and factory managers were told to mobilize for the demonstration.
Estimates of the size of the July 14 demonstration vary from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. But industrial workers generally stayed away. The organizers tried to set the stage to curtail some of the political space gained earlier for democratic rights and against police brutality. They threatened that some of those arrested would be given the death penalty. But they did not go as far as reversing the general condemnation of those who attacked students at Tehran University.
The demonstration was also a factional move against Khatami, who had endorsed it. His picture was as conspicuously absent from the placards as Ayatollah Khamenei's was abundant.
Regardless of the fortunes of the factions in the regime, the country went through a series of intense experiences in a period of less than one week. The bond established in struggle between students and working people in defense of democratic rights and against police and vigilante violence points to the opening of a new chapter in the class struggle. And this does not bode well for the imperialists' interests in the region.