NEWS)))))
Thousands of people staged a protest against the regime’s vigilantes in Mashhad north east of Iran. This protest began after the state police attacked a woman and intended to arrest her. It’s been weeks since the authorities are heading the streets in Iran and bothering women about their un-Islamic dress code! A gentleman tried to free her. The people who witnessed this barbaric act came to their rescue. They managed to free the woman and the man. According to reports 6 thousands were on the street where this incident happened. Police fired tear gas.
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Students in Tehran’s Polytechnic University staged a protest on campus on Sunday.The protest erupted outside the main entrance of the university.“Jailed students must be freed”, the students chanted. “Ansar, get lost”, they added, referring to Ansar-e Hezbollah, a paramilitary force that acts as the clerical regime’s storm troopers to put down anti-government demonstrations and instil terror in members of the public. Iranian officials have conceded in the past that the Ansar-e Hezbollah has been organized and led by close confidants of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, such as Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati.The student protest took place as hard-line vigilantes loyal to the Supreme Leader arrived on campus and began a counter demonstration. “Un-Islamic students must be executed”, the vigilantes yelled.Meanwhile, the student protestors called for the expulsion of the university’s chancellor and an end to the government-sponsored crackdown on student rights activists.Polytechnic University - also known as Amir Kabir University - has been a hotbed of anti-government demonstrations in recent months.
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Students at Amir Kabir University fended off club-wielding university security guards on Monday and went ahead with elections for a pro-democracy association. Despite the successful election at Amir Kabir, it is not clear that balloting for student associations will be allowed at other universities. The associations, a powerful center of support and communication among student democracy advocates, are a constant irritant to the government, which seeks to maintain strict control over politics and cultural norms.The University of Science and Industry, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad taught before he was elected, has not been permitted to hold elections for the past two years. Students at Tehran University have vowed to hold a ballot, but have yet to do so. Amir Kabir University has long been a center of student political activities. Students there chanted against Ahmadinejad when he visited the university late last year and set fire to posters bearing his likeness.A student leader, Mehrdad Khalilpour, was arrested Monday by security officials, but two of his comrades managed to escape. Among other student leaders, Babak Zamanian was arrested late last month and Ahmad Ghassaban was arrested on Friday.However, the student democracy advocates said they scored a victory on Monday when they managed to hold their annual elections. “The students reached the conclusion that the only way was to resist,” said Ehsan Mansouri, a student leader who has been banned from attending classes. “The students guarded the ballot boxes as they were attacked and clubbed severely by the university security guards.”Protests erupted last week after four student publications appeared with articles that offended religious sensibilities. Student advocates denounced the articles, saying the publications had been forged in an effort to frame the students.Under Iran’s Islamic law, punishment for the offense, technically “insulting religious sanctities,” can be death. One of the articles had risen what were seen as offensive questions about the return of the 12th Imam — the messiah in Shiite Islam.Conservatives protested last week inside and outside the university, calling for a second cultural revolution. Under the first, which followed the 1979 Islamic revolution, universities around the country were closed, and liberal students and professors were purged. The pressure on student advocates seems to be part of a major social and political crackdown. Women and younger men have been the target of the vice police in the past two weeks, with officers patrolling the streets and cautioning or arresting people they accused of looking immodest. The police also started seizing satellite dishes last week. Because the dishes provide access to opposition television channels they are officially banned, but that does not stop large numbers of people from using them. Reformist politicians, who were marginalized after Ahmadinejad’s election two years ago, became alarmed last week when a former nuclear negotiator, Mohammad Hussein Moussavian, was arrested on espionage charges. To many, the arrest seemed to signal a new crackdown on social freedoms. “No one should be surprised if they stage another cultural revolution and shut down the universities,” said Saeed Leylaz, an economist and political commentator in Tehran. “The Islamic Republic has reached a stage that wants to suppress any kind of dissent, even if that means creating a police state.”
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Reuters reported that the Senior officials from six world powers met in Berlin on Thursday to discuss Iran's defiance of U.N. demands that it stop uranium enrichment work the West believes is at the centre of a secret atom-bomb plan.The United Nations has already imposed limited sanctions after Tehran rejected resolutions ordering it to freeze the work. Political directors from the five permanent U.N. Security Council members -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- plus Germany assessed the situation on the sidelines of a Group of Eight (G8) meeting in Berlin.An official at the U.S. embassy confirmed that the meeting was over and that Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns would be leaving Berlin shortly and heading to Croatia.It was not immediately clear what decisions, if any, were made at the closed-door meeting. Diplomats from countries participating said the Americans had been eager to discuss possible language for a new sanctions resolution. Discussions on Iran will continue in Berlin during a G8 political directors meeting to prepare for the summit in Heiligendamm, Germany.
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Iranian authorities hanged five men in public in the southern town of Ravar, state media reported on Wednesday. The men were convicted of drug trafficking, the official state daily Iran wrote.Ravar is situated in the Iranian province of Kerman.
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A young man set himself on fire outside Iran’s Presidential Offices, the press office of Tehran’s Medical Emergency Centre said on Tuesday.The incident occurred at 14:11 on Sunday outside the public relations headquarters of Iranian regime’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the centre said.The man, who was not identified by name, was immediately rushed to a burns unit of a local Tehran hospital by ambulance.He has suffered 80 percent burns.Suicide among youths in Iran has reached an alarming rate in recent years. Many young people with no hope of a prosperous future are increasingly committing suicide, in some cases immolating themselves. Experts say that suicide is more common among young women and girls in Iran.
