Dissident students barred from universities – Minister

Students in Iran who were involved in the 2009 anti-government protests will not be allowed to study at Iranian universities, Minister of Science, Research and Technology Kamran Daneshjoo has reiterated in a move that groups in exile say is aimed at cleansing universities of all opposition.

The minister’s statement on 27 April at Shahroud University, carried by official news agencies, repeated a statement made in the religious city of Qom just two weeks earlier, when he said that students “active in the sedition” – a reference to the 2009 unrest in the wake of disputed presidential elections – did not have the right to attend university.

“I stress once again: those who were active in the sedition have no place in the university,” Daneshjoo said last week.

Last October Daneshjoo also announced that the ministry would cut off bursaries and grants for students found to be associated with the 2009 opposition movement.

At the time the Fars News Agency reported Daneshjoo as saying: “We cannot and the nation will not allow us to mete out money from the treasury to those who oppose the regime…and wherever we are informed that the bursary recipients are supporters of the sedition, we will definitely cut off the grant.”

After Daneshjoo’s statement on 10 April in Qom, student groups including the Union of Islamic Student Associations in Iran, the student pro-democracy organisation Takhim-e Vahdat and other student bodies stepped up their campaign for the release of detained students and called for academic freedom so that they could be allowed to return to universities.

The Bahai’i religious minority is also being barred from Iranian universities. Bani Dugal, principal representative of the Baha'i International Community to the United Nations, has said: "To actively deprive any youth of education is reprehensible and against all legal, religious, moral and humanitarian standards."

Iranian activist Puyan Mahmoudian, who was barred from university because of his undergraduate political activism, told a roundtable conference held last month at the European parliament and hosted by the International Organisation for Human Rights in Iran:

“Historically the Iranian student movement has had a remarkable influence on cultural, social and political developments within Iranian society. Lacking political freedom in Iran and in the absence of well-established civil society, universities have been put into the position of fulfilling functions of a civil society.

“Considering the high number of university students across the country – roughly four million – and the fact that the Iranian younger generation has mainly divorced itself from the state’s official ideology, we can understand the extent of fear the regime has toward universities,” he said.

Other analysts said the government wanted to isolate the opposition movement’s leaders from building and maintaining a vociferous student support base, particularly in the wake of events in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries during last year’s Arab Spring pro-democracy movement in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Iranian government is also attempting to clamp down on widespread student opposition to government attempts to increase gender segregation in universities.

In Qom in remarks carried by the Irna news agency on 11 April, Daneshjoo said that the “main problem with the country’s universities is that in some cases, they have a Western approach and are rooted in the West”.