Iranian students battle for democracy in Iran and at the BBC

Protests by Tehran’s Polytechnic University (formerly Amir Kabir) students over the ‎burial of five “unknown martyrs” led to attacks by the government’s strike forces, ‎resulting in physical assault and tens of arrests.‎
The students had initially prepared and presented a petition with more than 3,000 ‎signatures regarding the burial of the dead, but Basijis and “religious mourners” who had ‎come to the university from outside attacked the protestors with “knives and fisticuffs”.

Student demonstrations have been rare in Iran since 2005 after the introduction of measures under which protesters can be expelled from their faculties. But the reburial scheme has provoked accusations that the "martyrs" are being used as a political weapon.

Hadi Ghaemi, of the New York-based Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said: "The students are being targeted for their outspoken advocacy and defence of freedom of expression."

When Ahmadinejad became mayor of Tehran in 2003, he proposed that remains of troops killed in the war be reburied at each of the city's squares as a tribute to their sacrifice. The city council opposed the idea at the time.
"This is a scheme to create rallying points at universities for student supporters of the government. They would say that anybody who criticizes anything will in fact be criticizing the revered martyrs of the war," Abdullah Momeni, a former student leader, said in an interview Tuesday. "Universities are the last places in this country with a grain of freedom and the ability to express opinions."

"The students have deep respect for the martyrs," Momeni added. "It's the government that is abusing them for political games."

Demo Outside BBC TV Studios Iranian ex-pats today staged a demo outside the BBC TV studios in Wood Lane, London and protested against the lack of coverage of recent events at Tehran Polytechnic by the BBC correspondent in Tehran.

Demonstrators also stood at the main entrance gates of both buildings in Wood Lane and handed out leaflets shown below to the BBC employees as they went through the entrance gates to work.


Protesters also refused to leave unless their grievances with BBC coverage of Iran events was registered with the BBC News desk and the BBC Press Officer. At the end, the BBC agreed to allow one representative on behalf of the protesters to enter the building and register their criticisms of the BBC Iran coverage in a face to face meeting with a BBC representative.
Why we are Protesting Here

In the last week, there have been serious disturbances at Tehran Polytechnic. Hundreds of hired thugs and hoodlums as well as security forces have entered the university campus and clashed with Iran’s pro-democracy students. Nearly one hundred Iranian pro-democracy students from the Polytechnic have been arrested and sent to the notorious Evin prison. Twenty are in hospital as a result of their beatings and inflicted injuries and seven are in critical condition. More dissident students are hiding in the dormitories; the regime’s forces have surrounded the polytechnic but are not entering the dormitories as yet in fear of a recurrence of the student uprising in July 99 that spread to 19 Iranian cities.



Yet despite all this happening, the BBC correspondent in Iran has remained silent on the news preferring to report on safer subjects like Iranian women taxi drivers etc. While the plight of Iran’s real students is ignored by the BBC, whenever there is a government sponsored staged demo attacking foreign embassies, for example, the mob is referred to by the BBC as ‘Iranian students’, giving a totally wrong image of who Iran’s real students are to the viewers.


So much of the human rights abuse and the struggle of the Iranian people against the theocratic dictatorship is going unreported because the media correspondents fear expulsion from Iran and losing their comfortable posts.

As UK TV licence payers we demand better and more objective coverage of the protests and human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the BBC. This is vitally important especially now that the Islamic Republic funded Press TV is operating in UK and is brainwashing the English speaking Muslim audience with their misinformation party-line broadcasting.

Supporters of the Secular Pro-Democracy Movement in Iran

Islamic Republic propagandists exploit Palestinians in Quds Day

The International Day of Al-Quds, an annual assembly in opposition of Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem, is a creation of the propagandists in the Islamic Republic of Iran

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Just as elements within the right-wing Zionist establishment have exploited the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for financial and political gain, the Islamic Republic has used images of oppressed Palestinians for their own political and monetary expansion. They have funded the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalists while hurling deadening blows to a secular liberation movement.

During the Iran-Iraq War, using waves of child martyrs who crossed the battle line, the emboldened Ayatollah Khomeini had proclaimed his determination to spread his revolution throughout the region. This revolution has brought the suppression of thought and speech, censorship, repression, violation of women’s rights, torture and mass execution of political dissidents, spying and wiretapping, invasion of privacy, execution of gays and lesbians, medieval public executions such as stoning and hanging, barbaric punishments such as flogging, illegal and closed-door court trials, and a vast range of violation of human rights.

The International Alliance of Iranian Students sends its harshest condemnation to the Islamic Republic and their deceiving propaganda of exploiting the suffering of Palestinians. The theocratic regime in Iran is an obstacle in pursuit of the collective will of the people of this war-torn region.

Alliance of Iranian Students