The government’s attacks on protesting students at one of Iran’s top engineering and technology institutions in the capital Tehran last weekend has drawn condemnation from several foreign leaders.
Iranian state media described “reports of clashes” at the university, and video footage of the events at Sharif University and activities at other universities around the country have spurred international condemnation.
“Hard to bear what is happening at Sharif University in Iran,” Germany’s Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock tweeted on Monday 3 October in a rare reference to a specific incident at a university. “The courage of the Iranians is incredible. And the regime’s brute force is an expression of sheer fear of the power of education and freedom,” she said.
United States President, Joe Biden issued a statement on Monday saying he was “gravely concerned about reports of the intensifying violent crackdown on peaceful protesters in Iran, including students and women, who are demanding their equal rights and basic human dignity”.
Breaking weeks of silence, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded publicly on Tuesday to condemn what he called “rioting”.
Khamenei said he was “heartbroken” by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s morality police, following her arrest for wearing her headscarf too loosely – the chain of events which set off the nationwide protests.
However, he condemned the protests as a foreign plot to destabilise Iran – a common and often unproven response by the government to unrest in the country.
Khamenei described the actions of protesters removing headscarves and setting fire to mosques, banks and police cars as “not normal” and “unnatural”.
On Sunday, Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf warned that protests could destabilise the country and urged security forces to deal harshly with those who he claimed endangered public order.
How Sunday’s events unfolded
According to reports online, hundreds of security force personnel on Sunday besieged Sharif University where students had started a boycott and sit-down protests during the third week of demonstrations after the death in police custody of Amini on 16 September.
According to the university’s student union and other student sources, the university’s president, Rasool Jalili, negotiated with security forces, after the university’s gates were locked, for students to leave through the university’s underground parking area.
However, police instead chased students through the carpark, beating many and making arrests.
Video footage showed Sharif students hooded, or with their shirts covering their heads, being taken away in police vans, some of them reported to be ‘accompanied’ by university professors. A student source said professors had initially formed a human chain to prevent security officials from nabbing the students.
Security forces blocked campus entrances and fired tear gas shells in the direction of students. Gunshots were heard around campus, according to video footage.
Iran’s official Mehr News Agency said security forces had fired tear gas and paintballs at the students, adding that the security forces were carrying weapons that fire “non-lethal steel pellets” outside the university’s north gate.
On Sunday one person inside the university told IranWire: “Outside the university, quite serious clashes are going on in different areas [in front of the entrance and at the main door and the parking lot] and we had taken shelter inside the university to be safe. Uniformed forces were waiting at a distance to arrest anyone who left the university.”
Social media channels were awash with calls for help from besieged students – with messages such as: “Do not allow the security forces to kill and arrest students.”
