Iranian Student Leader Arrested - Babak Zamanian

Just a note to my non-Iranian readers: Based on my limited knowledge on the bureaucratic system in existence in Iran - anyone wanting to set up a university association in Iran under the Islamists must describe their association as "Muslim Students Association at...." in order to get the seal of approval by the authorities - this however has nothing to do with the personal/religious nor political beliefs of the students that belong to these groups. As an excellent example, the below student's association from Tehran's Polytechnic has nothing to do with Islam and has always served as a venue where students can voice their rejection of the system through various means.

The Islamic Republic has its own official student groups like the Basij or Ansar-Hezbollah whose members are either brainwashed dirt-poor Iranian villagers or non-Iranians; like Arabs from Lebanon/Palestine or Afghans. These groups are used to tarnish the image of Iranian students with foreign news agencies usually describing these animals as "Iranian students" when they bus in 100-200 of themselves to hold anti-western demonstrations.


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Iran: Student Spokesman Arrested

April 25, 2007
AKI
Rah/Aki

Tehran -- The spokesman of the Muslim Students Association at a Tehran polytechnic was arrested on Wednesday, Iranian news agency ILNA reports. Babak Zamanian was reportedly arrested because of interviews he gave to Farsi language radio stations that broadcast outside Iran. The students of the Amir Kabir Polytechnic made front page news around the world last December when they managed to prevent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on a visit to their campus, from making his speech. It was the first time since his landslide victory in June 2005 that Ahmadinejad had been challenged in public.

Dozens of protesters burned pictures of the Iranian president crying 'dictator go away', 'death to dictatorship' and threw firecrackers, forcing him to interrupt several times a speech and leave before scheduled.

"The direction of the university had been warned we didn't want Ahmadinejad here," Mehdi Hatefi, an activist with students' group Tahkim Vahdat told Adnkronos International (AKI) at the time, saying the organisers had tried to fill up the lecture hall with people from other universities.