July.08.2008

18 Tir, July 9 1999 (Students protest) with Mr. Tajzadeh (2nd part)

My dear friend, Mr. Tajzadeh, on the threshold of 18 Tir, July 9th, has answered to some questions on that bitter event and  has sent them specifically for the readers of Webnevesht. Today we review the second part of it:

3. Is this event important enough that every year, on its anniversary, it should be remembered? and does it need to become a turning point in the students movement?

The answer is yes; we had not witnessed such brutal and irrational attack to the students from the time Tehran University was established. This attack was so sorrowful that whoever entered dormitory on the first days and noticed the signs of beating up, got very impressed and cried and could not believe that in the Islamic republic of Iran one could have made such a savage attack to students throwing, some of them who were sleeping from the second floor to the yard and injuring many students and the day after that a hidden but known movement killed Ezzat Ebrahim Nejad and later those who had ordered and had executed were acquitted and after a while the claimant and defendant changed their roles. In this situation, the commemoration is required.

4. Why did this event happen?

Different analyses are provided in this section. To me it seems that those who were looking for power wanted to kill two birds with one stone. Based on their analysis, the press and the university were the two wings of reformism that had to be crushed down at any cost so that reformism would fall down and it would be easy to suppress it. Therefore, by unjustifiable ban on Salam newspaper and inhuman attack to students of the dormitory of Tehran University, they created an atmosphere that indifference would govern the universities so that if press were banned in groups based on the law related to the corrupt men, no one could protest.  Mr Saffar Harandi, the present minister of Guidance, who was the deputy of Mr. Hossein Shariat Madar at that time, wrote in an article after group closure of the press that "we closed the newspapers and nothing happened" and he concluded that "these newspapers did not enjoy people's support". From the viewpoint of the Guidance minister of Ahmadi Nejad government, the circulation and effectiveness of the press in the public opinion was not the sign of their social basis but non-demonstration by people shows that people did not support those press and people did not disagree with group closure of press. In my opinion Salam newspaper and Tehran University, as the signs of free press and independent university, were combated so that other newspapers and universities care about what they do.