Iranian students defy official demand for end to protests

Students in Iran have ignored an official warning to stay off the streets despite authorities cracking down in an attempt to quell widespread revolt.

On 29 October, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards told protesters that Saturday would be their “last day of riots”. According to news reports, security forces may be preparing to ramp up their response to demonstrators, having already used tear gas and live rounds to disperse crowds.

But the protests – now in their seventh week after the death of a young woman in custody – appear to show no signs of letting up, with students raising their voices against the government both in the streets and on university campuses.

“Universities have been hotbeds of unrest for weeks…Iranian students feel they are taking part in a revolution, and this sentiment will not be easily thwarted by security forces,” said Jason Brodsky, policy director of United against Nuclear Iran, a US-based non-profit organisation.

In recent days, students at several universities – including Tehran’s prestigious Sharif University of Technology and the Hormozgan University, located in a more socially conservative part of Iran – took the battle inside campuses as they tore down the barriers that segregate cafeterias, dividing men and women.

The students’ actions show that they are “prepared to engage in civil disobedience because they completely reject the Islamic Republic’s gender apartheid strictures”, said Mr Brodsky.

Researchers noted that gender segregation was the norm in Iran, affecting everything from eating spaces to lecture halls, sports facilities and even parks.

Afshin Ellian, a Dutch-Iranian professor of law and head of the department of jurisprudence at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said that with universities the “de facto” site of protests, students’ actions threaten the regime’s hold on power.

“Gender barriers, such as gender segregation, or the mandatory hijab, resemble the Berlin Wall, according to Iranian women’s activist Masih Alinejad. If this wall falls, so does everything else. It is the core identity of the sharia-based Iranian regime,” he said.

While students have been tearing down such barriers by force, he was sceptical that administrators, who tend to side with the regime, would cave in to demands to desegregate their institutions, even if they were unable to prevent students from eating together or removing headscarves.

Professor Ellian said lasting reforms could take place only when Iran’s conservative sharia-based laws formally change. Still, he continued, it seemed that students’ actions were starting to wear down the government.

“The battle is now about more than gender segregation. Students are now shouting: ‘we do not want an Islamic republic, we want freedom of speech’…Nightly demonstrations deplete the energy of security forces. And we see that factions of the regime have become fearful of their future. It is beginning to look like a revolution,” he said.

He urged institutions abroad to support those calling for change.

“Declare solidarity, take symbolic actions and, more importantly, boycott university administrators in Iran,” he said.

pola.lem@timeshighereducation.com