Iran Arrests Four Student Leaders

ISNA website

Four prominent Iranian student activists were arrested over the weekend in a fresh crackdown targeting students.
Iranian authorities have been tightening security ahead of a controversial government plan to phase out basic food and fuel subsidies.
The government is bracing for social unrest, and has increased the police presence in Tehran and other cities. On Monday, several underground rap musicians were arrested in Tehran, and last week hundreds of young men and women were arrested in what the police termed a 'security cleansing’.
The four students, from cities across Iran, are recently elected members of the central committee of a politically active student group, the Office for Fostering Student Unity, which has local chapters at campuses nationwide. The group has been at the forefront of the struggle to reform the regime.
The group says the government pressured it not to hold its biennial election this year to select five new committee members. The ballot was held via the Internet last week, the group said, and as of Monday, four of the five elected had been arrested and one was in hiding.
The detained students are Ali Qolizadeh, Alireza Kiani, Mohsen Barzegar and Mohamad Heydarzadeh. The four men were picked up by plainclothes agents without arrest warrants, according to their families and the group's website. Their current whereabouts aren't known. Prosecutors in local chapters of the Revolutionary Court, which tries political dissidents, have told their families that the men will be transferred to Evin prison in Tehran in the next few days.
‘Day to day, the regime is systematically targeting different groups, like lawyers, students and journalists, in order to prevent them from activism,' said Hadi Ghaemi, director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, an independent organization based in New York.
The case of a jailed human-rights lawyer is also in the spotlight after she began a hunger strike last week. Nasrin Sotoudeh, a mother of two young children, has been in solitary confinement for 75 days. She faces trial later this month on charges of threatening national security and of belonging to a nonprofit organization of human-rights lawyers in Iran.
President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad has denied that Iran imprisons its critics and has slammed recent reports of human-rights violations in Iran as propaganda. 'All of our opponents and their leaders are free. We do not have any critics or opponents in jail,' Mr. Ahamdinejad told journalists in New York during his September visit to the United Nations General Assembly.
One of the detained students, Mr. Qolizadeh, a 25-year-old with a degree in engineering, was a subject of a front-page Wall Street Journal story last December detailing the Iranian regime's war on student activists.
Mr. Qolizadeh, the only son of a working-class family in the conservative northwestern town of Mashad, had been a candidate to study for an M.B.A. degree. In a placement exam, he earned a national ranking of 43 among 25,000 applicants, but was told he was banned for life from education because of his political activism.
Mr. Qolizadeh later received several scholarship offers from western universities. He told The Wall Street Journal over the summer that he was studying to improve his English, but had decided to stay in Iran. 'Leaving Iran is like defeat,' he said. 'I feel that I can better serve our cause from here now’.
Mr. Qolizadeh's mother, reached by phone in Mashad, said her family was devastated and had been warned not to talk to the media about her son.
‘My son has done nothing wrong, he is innocent,' she said. 'Why are they treating the country's brightest youth this way’? (Wall Street Journal- Nov. 8, 2010)

Iran to send drug dealers to forced labor camps
The head of the State Security Forces Narcotics Department stressed that forced labor camps would be built in the outskirts of large cities and said, “Narcotics drug dealers who have been arrested by the police will be transferred to these camps and will be put to work under the hardest possible conditions”.
According to him, drug dealers will be put to work in these forced labor camps under hard and severe conditions so that when they leave the camp, they would not think about going back to drug dealing.
“The arrangements for this plan have been made and in the very near future, forced labor camps will host drug dealers”, Hossein Abadi said.

ايران 4 رهبر دانشجويي را دستگير ميکند
در روزهاي آخر هفته، در يک سرکوبي جديد عليه دانشجويان، 4 دانشجوي فعال ايراني شناخته شده دستگير شدند.
مقامات ايراني قبل از به اجرا گذاشتن طرح دولت جهت حذف سوبسيدهاي غذا و سوخت شرايط امنيتي شديدي را تدارک ديدند.
دولت در حال آماده‌شدن براي مقابله با ناآرامي‌هاي اجتماعي است و حضور پليس در تهران و شهرهاي بزرگ ديگر را افزايش داده است. روز دوشنبه چندين موسيقيدان زيرزميني رپ (rap) در تهران، و هفته گذشته صدها مرد و زن جوان، به اسم “پاکسازي امنيتي“ دستگير شدند.
چهار دانشجو از شهرهاي سرتاسر ايران اخيراً اعضايي از کميته‌مرکزي گروه دانشجويان فعال سياسي، موسوم به دفتر تحکيم وحدت دانشجويي (office for fostering student unity) را برگزيدند. اين دفتر در تمامي دانشکده‌هاي سراسر ايران شعبي دارد. اين گروه پيشتار مبارزه براي اصلاح رژيم بوده است.
گروه ميگويد که دولت روي آن فشار گذاشته تا از انتخابات دو ساله براي انتخاب 5 عضو جديد دست نگه دارد. گروه گفت نظرسنجي از طريق اينترنت روز دوشنبهصورت گرفته و از 5نفر انتخاب شده 4نفرشان دستگير و نفر پنجم در خفابهسر ميبرد.
علي قلي‌زاده، عليرضا کيان، محسن برزگر و محمد حيدرزاده دانشجويان دستگير شده ميباشند. اين چهار دانشجو به گفته خانواده‌هايشان و همچنين وب‌سايت دانشجويي، توسط پليس‌هاي لباس شخصي بدون حکم دادگاه دستگير شده و از محل حبس آنها اطلاعي در دست نيست. …
حميد قائمي، مدير کارزار بين‌المللي حقوقبشر در ايران، سازماني مستقل و مستقر در نيويورک اظهار داشت، “ روزانه رژيم بهطور سيستماتيک گروههاي دانشجويي، مانند وکلا، دانشجويان و روزنامه‌نگاران را مورد هدف قرار ميدهد تا مانع از فعاليتهاي آنها شود“.
قضيه خانم وکيل [مدافع] حقوقبشر زنداني، که هفته پيش اعتصاب غذاي خود را شروع کرد، در کانون توجهات قرار دارد. نسرين ستوده، 75روز در زندان انفرادي محبوس بوده است. اواخر اين ماه وي دادگاهي خواهد شد. …
محمود احمدينژاد رئيسجمهور ايران انکار کرد که ايران مخالفين خود را زنداني ميکند و گزارشات داده شده در مورد نقض حقوقبشر در ايران تبليغات سوء ميباشد…
آقاي قلي‌زاده 25ساله و داراي مدرک مهندسي، يکي از 4 دانشجوي زنداني است که داستان وي در صفحه اول روزنامه وال استريت ژورنال در دسامبر گذشته آمده بود. روزنامه موضوع جنگ رژيم با فعالين دانشجويي را با جزئيات درج کرده بود.
آقاي قلي‌زاده، تنها فرزند خانواده کارگري ساکن مشهد، شهر محافظه‌کار شمال‌شرقي ايران ميباشد که براي ادامه تحصيل براي اخذ مدرک فوق‌ليسانس انتخاب شد. وي در ميان 25هزار متقاضي در سطح کشور، رتبه چهلو ‌سوم را به‌دست آورده بود. به وي ابلاغ شد که بهخاطر فعاليت سياسي، مادام‌العمر از تحصيل محروم است.
آقاي قلي‌زاده بعداً از دانشگاههاي کشورهاي غربي به وي چندين کمک‌هزينه دانشجويي پيشنهاد شده بود.
وي به روزنامه وال استريت ژورنال در تابستان گفت که وي براي ارتقاء زبان انگليسي به تحصيل مشغول است، ليکن تصميم به ماندن در ايران دارد. وي گفت، “ترک ايران به منزله شکست ميباشد. احساس ميکنم که از همين جا ميتوانم نهضت‌مان را بهتر پيش ببريم“.
مادر آقاي قلي‌زاده که با وي تلفني تماس گرفته شده بود، گفت که خانواده وي متلاشي شده است و به آنها هشدار داده شده که در مورد فرزندشان با رسانه‌ها صحبتي نکنند.
وي گفت، “فرزندم مرتکب هيچ عمل خطايي نشده و بيگناه است. چرا با باهوش‌ترين جوانان کشور اين چنين عمل ميکنند؟ ” (وال استريت ژورنال- 17/8/89)