TEHRAN, 7 July 2004 — Iranian authorities signaled yesterday they had banned any commemorations marking this week’s fifth anniversary of violent student protests amid an effort to prevent a fresh outburst of anti-regime dissent.
In comments carried in the Iranian press, the security affairs chief for Tehran, Ali Taala, said the Interior Ministry had decided to bar any gatherings and rejected a request for a student event outside Tehran University.
Student representatives have also reportedly been summoned to meet Tehran police chief Gen. Morteza Talaie and Mohsen Gomi, a university representative of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“In recent years there have been excellent relations between police and students and today, hand in hand, we should try to forget the bad memories of the 18th of Tir,” or July 9, 1999, Talaie was quoted as telling them.
In addition, the Tehran University campus will also be shut down for the anniversary. A pro-reform group, the Association of Islamic Students, told the news agency ISNA that it had been informed the measure was taken to “disinfect the campus because of cockroach infestation”.
Although Deputy Interior Minister Ali Asghar Ahmadi later insisted to ISNA that “no decision” had been taken by his ministry on the event, he did assert it was “not necessary” to mark the deadly riots.
On July 9, 1999, pro-democracy students clashed with police in Tehran and other cities in unrest sparked by a heavy-handed police and vigilante raid on a smaller dormitory protest over newspaper closures.
Officially, one student was killed and hundreds of others injured in the violence, which prompted a major regime crackdown on dissent in universities — a major driving force behind the pro-democracy movement.
On each anniversary of the unrest, the government has sought to prevent any gatherings from taking place.
In 2003, protesters merely took to the streets of Tehran in their cars, honking their horns, with the sidewalks and universities patrolled by huge numbers of police.
Prior to the anniversary last year, some 4,000 people were arrested in the wake of other protests. In recent months, police and Special Forces
units have been out in force in the capital, officially to help crackdown on bad driving amid an effort to cut Iran’s massive highway death toll.
“There is a view that the Special Forces are there to show that the regime is strong and powerful enough to tackle any protest,” explained journalist and analyst Hamid-Reza Jalaipour. “But in all truth, they have been mainly deployed to sort out the traffic problem and above all arrest motorcyclists who are the cause of a lot of accidents.”
Nevertheless, the 25-year-old Islamic government has gone all-out to prevent fresh protests. This year the anniversary falls on Thursday, July 8, due to the difference in the Gregorian and Persian calendars.
“The end-of-year exams finished a week ago, and the universities and dormitories are now closed,” said Abdollah Momeni, a leading member of the Office to Consolidate Unity, Iran’s main pro-reform student group.
“The police presence will also have a dissuasive effect, even if officially they are there to control the traffic.
“But we do think the events of the 18th of Tir should be preserved in the memory of Iranians, so we will be sending a letter of protest to the United Nations Human Rights Commission,” he said.
Under the circumstances, observers and even activists say no major protests can be expected. “There has been a lethargic atmosphere in the universities,” Momeni admitted.
Since the last anti-government protests a year ago, Iran’s reformist camp has become increasingly isolated. Most moderates were barred from contesting February’s Parliament elections, won easily by conservatives. The polls passed off calmly despite charges from reformists that the result had been rigged.
Meanwhile, Iran has appealed to Russia, which is helping build its first nuclear power plant, not to yield to US pressure to abandon the multimillion dollar deal, the official news agency IRNA reported yesterday.
“In light of the good relations and expanding cooperation between Tehran and Moscow, Iran expects Russia not to yield to the US biased approach and constant political pressure,” Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was quoted as telling visiting Russian security chief Igor Ivanov.
Ivanov held a string of meetings here in Iran, which according to Iranian press reports were focused on the nuclear issue, the ongoing dispute over sharing Caspian Sea resources and the situation in the Caucasus.
In another development, a Chinese woman detained at Tehran airport on charges of carrying a fake passport has finally been released after three months in legal and linguistic limbo, a press report said yesterday. The Iran Daily newspaper said the woman, identified only as a student traveling as a tourist, was finally put on trial after the Chinese Embassy here provided her with a translator.
The 26-year-old, who was not named, was detained at the capital’s Mehrabad airport in late March as she tried to leave the Islamic republic. Unable to speak any of the languages the Islamic republic’s judiciary or immigration service are equipped to deal with, she was instead locked away in prison and almost forgotten about.
The paper said that when she finally appeared before a judge, she asserted she had no idea she was carrying a fake passport. Although unable to pay a fine of 2.5 million rials ($310), she was then sent home on a flight to Beijing.
