Dozens of university students staged a rare protest in Iran, where the authorities have waged an intensifying campaign against dissent amid the war with the United States.
Students at Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran rallied on September 28 against the country’s hijab law, called for the release of classmates who have been imprisoned, and decried the poor living conditions on campus.
Videos verified by RFE/RL appear to show a crowd of students clapping and chanting slogans outside the campus in the Iranian capital.
Members of the volunteer Basij paramilitary force, which is overseen by the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, purportedly attempted to disperse the protesters.
In one of the videos, a member of the Basij appears to threaten to “put the students in a sack,” or body bag.
The demonstrators pledged to continue protesting, although no new protest was reported on September 29.
Protests have been rare in Iran since the authorities waged an unprecedented crackdown on mass demonstrations in January, killing thousands of people according to human rights groups.
The protests were triggered by spiraling inflation, a currency freefall, and deteriorating living conditions and posed the gravest threat to Iran’s clerical rulers since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Iran’s war with the United States and Israel, which began in late February, has led to a widening of the crackdown on dissent.
Iranians who spoke to RFE/RL’s Radio Farda describe a growing climate of fear in the country of some 90 million people.
Human rights groups have documented a surge in public executions and arrests on national security charges, including espionage.
Universities and students have been at the forefront of the struggle for greater social and political freedoms in Iran. In 1999, students protested the closure of a reformist daily, prompting a brutal raid on the dorms of Tehran University that left one student dead.
Over the years, the authorities have arrested student activists and leaders, sentencing them to prison and banning them from studying.
