Student Day In Iran: Security Agents Attack, Kidnap Student Protesters

Iranian university students marked Student Day on December 7 with more protests and strikes, as many businesses across the country remained closed for a third day.

Students have been at the forefront of nationwide protests sparked by the September death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police.

Security forces have raided university campuses and dormitories to identify and arrest the protesting students amid a bloody state crackdown on the protest movement demanding more freedoms and women's rights. Other students have been banned from entering their universities.

On December 7, which is Student Day in Iran, uniformed and plainclothes officers and university security agents attacked several student gatherings and clashed with the demonstrators.

 In one of these raids, Tehran University student Mohammad Shebahati was kidnapped by the security forces and taken to the security building of the university. Several students were injured and left bloodied by the attacking security forces, according to the Students' Trade Union Association.

At the entrance of the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, three students of Khajeh Nasir University were reportedly abducted by plainclothes officers and taken away in a vehicle. The students are: Arian Heydari, Amirhossein Garshasebi, and Erfan Zarei.

Violence was also reported in the northeastern city of Mashhad, where a student attending a rally of Ferdowsi University of Sciences posted a video on social media and wrote: "We had gathered in front of the Science Square, and the security agents of the university got into a fight with the students. They caught one of the students, but he managed to escape. They also threatened us with a shocker. Another person was caught around Science Square and taken away in a Samand car."

The Telegram channel of the United Students group also published footage of an attack by security agents and uniformed forces on students at Amirkabir University in Tehran.

“Students' desire for freedom and unity”

Pictures published on social media show empty classes in many institutions of higher education across Iran.

 The students of the Technical Faculty of Isfahan University said that security officers and plainclothes forces took pictures of empty classes and prevented students from gathering in the hall.

In a video obtained by IranWire, students at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of Tehran University chanted the slogan, "The student is awake and hates oppression".

Meanwhile, two university students imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin prison, Ali Younesi and Amirhossein Moradi, published a message to mark Student Day.

"Today, the university is on the one hand the arena for demonstrating the students' desire for freedom and unity, and on the other hand it has become a scandal for the vile nature of this criminal regime that shamelessly encircles, shoots, and oppresses students," they wrote.

A Revolutionary Court sentenced Younesi and Moradi, of Sharif University of Technology, to 16 years in prison on spurious national security charges after a grossly unfair trial.

Students at Al-Zahra University in Tehran published a statement in which they described the university as "a remnant of a rotten body that today has turned into a detention center".

"The voice of the student's desire for freedom cannot be restrained, and the loud cry of the call for justice will bring down the rotten walls of this oppressive prison on your head”.