Early on the morning of 9 July 2007, six members of the High Council of the OCU staged a sit-in at the main entrance of Amir Kabir University of Technology, a reputed science and engineering institution in Tehran. Only 90 minutes into the sit-in, the students were reportedly attacked and arrested by uniform and plainclothes Iranian security forces. The six arrested members of the HCOCU are: Mohammad Hashemi, Ali Nikoo Nesbati, Mahdi Arabshahi, Bahare Hedayat, Hanif Yazdani, and Ali Vafghi. FIDH and LDDHI hold great concern for the above and their physical integrity as their whereabouts remains unknown.
The sit-in was staged to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the Iranian student uprising of 1999 and to bring attention more generally to the environment of repression and fear that permeates Iranian civil society and to the severe restrictions on human rights in Iran. The participating students also called on their government to end the continued detention of eight fellow students. In a public statement detailing their motivation, the participants declared that it is the mission of their generation "to expose those in power who hide behind phony masks of justice, freedom, and religion, and use their authority to suppress the masses and violate their rights."
The response of the Iranian authorities to this latest protest continues a worrying trend in Iran in which students and academics are frequently silenced. This latest incident vividly highlights Iran’s recent history of brutal suppression of the student movement which has seen egregious human rights violations perpetrated by authorities upon students and their families. FIDH recalls that Akbar Mohammadi, one of the students arrested in 1999 for participation in a peaceful demonstration, died in detention in July 2006. He had been subjected to severe ill-treatment in detention.
"We are extremely concerned for the well-being of the six students and we call on the Iranian authorities to immediately disclose their whereabouts. Their treatment in detention must conform to the international standards to which Iran has agreed and they must be immeditely released since their detention is arbitrary", declared Karim Lahidji, Vice-président of FIDH and President of the LDDHI.
In recognition of the importance of a robust civil society, FIDH and LDDHI urge the Iranian authorities to afford the student movement and its members all civil and political rights guaranteed to them under the the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in particular the rights to freedom of association, expression and peaceful assembly.