As details of the death toll for January’s protests continue to emerge, three students explain why they are resisting a return to normality
More than 45 days after a brutal January crackdown that left thousands of Iranian protesters dead, students across several universities are protesting again. As Iran’s new academic term began on Saturday, students in Tehran gathered on campus, chanting anti-government slogans, despite a heavy security presence and plainclothes officers stationed outside university gates.
The Guardian spoke to protesting students about why they were rallying despite the fact that thousands had been killed and tens of thousands arrested in the January demonstrations.
“Our classrooms are empty because the graveyards are full,” said Hossein*, 21, a student at the University of Tehran. “It’s for them – our friends, classmates and compatriots, who were gunned down in front of our eyes, that we decided to boycott the classes.”
because of lies and oil as always. there wasnt any us intervention in the middle east in history that left the country better. evil fucking empire.
How do we improve things for the people of Iran?
By not subjecting them to criminal economics mic sanctions, which are known to murder more than half a million people yearly?
Why not use sanctions? What universal law is there that we cannot, under any circumstances, block economic interaction? Governments unable to block trade might be the ultimate capitalist dream but there’s no reason sane people should be forced into it.
What part of “US sanctions murder half a million people yearly” do you not understand or care about?
For starters: the absolute vagueness of it
Say that I’m doing some genocides and you decide you don’t want to trade with me anymore because of it. If that means I run out of money and my baby starves, would you have remorse?
(This is a simplified allegory of the situation, but I hope you care enough about the world to understand the comparison)
Fuck off, Zionist fascist scum
By respecting their agency.
by keeping your grubby arrogant hands off of it and stop lying about it. huge improvement already.
We don’t. Stop being a chauvinist. The Iranian people, together, improve things for themselves. Our responsibility is to dismantle the Western imperialist machine that has killed almost 40 million people in the last 50 years through sanctions alone
Why would I need to dismantle the Western machine and not the Iranian one?
Because you don’t live in Iran and it’s not your responsibility. Your responsibility, depending on where you live, is to dismantle the closest link to you in the chains that hold the world in imperial bondage, which is the Western machine helmed by the USA.
Why would these be exclusive?
Because toppling the Iranian government is aligned with empire’s goals and creates positive reinforcing outcomes for the empire. So either you fight the empire and frustrate its goals in Iran, or you support the empir by bringing about its goals in Iran even if your heart is pure.
So these people should teach their children that they should give up on hoping for a better life, because that would somehow help teh empire?
I hope you teach your kids something different
You’re such a bad propagandist. Hope for better life doesn’t help the empire. Hope for a better life comes from hoping for the death of the empire, the end of sanctions, the end of neocolonial oppression and extraction. When the empire dies, Iran will flourish for all Iranians. That is what Iranians hope for. No one hopes for American bombs.