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More student protests in Iran

Seventy Iranian students have been arrested during protests against the reburial of troops who died during the Iran-Iraq war on the grounds of a Tehran university. Others were beaten up by the semi-official paramilitary goons of Ansar-e-Hizbullah.

Twenty of those detained have reportedly been transferred to Evin Prison, where many of Iran’s political prisoners are kept, and where Canadian Zahra Kazemi was murdered.

Protesters fear that the presence of war graves at the university will be used as pretext to suppress demonstrations on campus. Iranian students have been at the forefront of protests demanding greater political freedom in Iran.

The story has received relatively little attention. But the Washington Post covers it here. There is a cell phone video of the protests here. And, as always, blogger Potkin Azarmehr draws on some well-founded righteous rage about how little support Iranian democrats and activists get from their supposed counterparts in the West.

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