Posted on 06/26/2003 8:19:46 AM PDT by DoctorZIn
TEHRAN - Disappointed Iranian students issued a "final warning" Thursday to the ruling Islamic establishment, saying their wrath was about to explode as security agents continued arresting classmates in a bid to undermine plans to mark the fourth anniversary of a fatal raid by hard-liners on a university dormitory.
"We openly declare that these words are the final words of dialogue between the student movement and the ruling establishment," students said in a strongly worded letter addressed to President Mohammad Khatami. Signed Thursday by 106 prominent students, the letter protested the trampling of legitimate freedoms and a government ban on street rallies to mark the July 9, 1999, raid on a Tehran University dormitory that killed one person and injured at least 20 others.
The 1999 attacks, led by police and hardline vigilantes who support Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, triggered six days of nationwide protests, the worst since the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the pro-U.S. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
One of the letter's signatories, Saeed Razavi Faqih, said if Khatami failed to heed the students' warning, the students would even stop recognizing the legitimacy of elected reformists within Iran's ruling establishment. "The rulers should know that confronting the student movement will have a bitter ending for this establishment, which has lost almost all its legitimacy," he said.
Khatami, who was elected on a platform of delivering wide social and political reforms, has been criticized by fellow reformers for only deploring - not condemning - attacks two weeks ago by hardline vigilantes against two Tehran student dormitories.
Students criticized Khatami's silence as "painful and disappointing."
"We call on you (Khatami)... to react before it's too late and adopt a reasonable solution, or otherwise have the courage to resign so that you don't justify oppressive policies (of hardliners) and allow students to settle their accounts with the establishment," the letter said.
The protests earlier this month began with students demonstrating against plans to privatize universities and snowballed into broader displays of opposition to Khamenei's clerical establishment. Government authorities have said they arrested about 520 protesters, mostly "hooligans." But students say most of those detained are students.
Razavi Faqih said security agents this week detained several more student leaders, including Mahdi Aminizadeh and Abdollah Momeni.
The students' letter also accused the Interior Ministry of refusing to permit July 9 street rallies, while university officials have been opposed to holding ceremonies on university grounds.
While protesters have regularly condemned unelected hardline clerics and supported Khatami, the recent student-led protests had for the first time called for the establishment's ouster and denounced Khatami for failing to fulfill promises.
Hopefully, with our forces so near, and with the direct warnings we are already issuing to the Islamic regime...we can help keep the vacuum from developing and give those people a chance to develop a true government based ontrue republican principles.
If we do not, they could end up with something worse. As I say, I postulate that very thing (among many others) in my book sereis.
Best regards.
Are these protestors for freedom or for secular marxism?
I pray they are for liberty and republican government, and that we are in a position to help them get that...but am concerned per my earlier posts that it has a potential for ending up even worse.
Apparently, the university is about to be owned by a big shot mullah whom they obviously hate. That is what I heard.
The people in Iran by their own polling 70% support a "radical change of regime" and 90% support "changes in the regime."
I wish them well!
Like anywhere else there are a variety of directions they want to go. Nearly all of the communication I get from the Student Movement is strongly supporting a secular democracy and freemarkets. The intial demonstations were not delibrately started with to create a nationwide regime change. But it was the spark.
November 4, 1979: Students of Iran, stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, seizing Americans at gunpoint and holding them as prisoners, or to be technically correct, hostages, held for a political purpose, and that purpose was to unite Iran as a nation, and to humiliate the United States, Iran's most powerful ally.
Can't these bloody dimwits make up their minds?!?!
Free Persia now.
A similar activity in Iran would be camel tipping ;-)
Also, if they fail to carry out their threat, they'll look weak to both their supporters and opponents.
The mullahs have really painted themselves into a corner by making this public threat.
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