Group of Students: The Student Community Will Not Submit to Mandatory Hijab Plan

A group of students from three universities in Tehran issued a statement on Friday, December 7, on the occasion of "Student Day," declaring their positions against the government, anti-social movements, workers, retirees, and the underprivileged. They emphasized that, in addition to the hardships imposed by the Islamic Republic on universities and society, there must be a clear demarcation from deviant forces. The statement, a copy of which was obtained by Voice of America, states: "The student community, like other sectors of society, will not submit to the hijab and chastity plan and considers it a fetus that was born dead from the beginning." The statement was signed by a group of student activists from the University of Tehran, Allameh Tabatabai University, and Beheshti University. It added: "The right to determine clothing and not to be subjected to the Islamic hijab defined by the government is a right that the university fought for alongside society in 1401 (2022) and paid the maximum cost like other previous movements." The signatories believe that "the Iranian woman without rights, alongside the overlooked sexual and gender minorities, has seen herself in such a subordinate position that she inevitably became part of the driving force of protests against the existing order two years ago." Accordingly, the statement noted that "the end of summer 1401 proved that no social movement in Iran will gain traction without the stamp of women's names on its forehead." The signatories considered this event a lesson that part of the university has also reached, which is that the issue of women and women's rights cannot be addressed as "the subject of an independent and singular individual." The authors of this student statement also referred to the many wounds inflicted before and after the "Zhina Movement" on the university and emphasized that they will not cease efforts to "rebuild and revive independent student and guild organizations, fight against the commercialization of universities, combat special quotas, and strive for the freedom of imprisoned students and the return of dismissed professors." They also pointed out that this approach specifically distinguishes them from small student movements led by reformists, justice seekers, and resistance axis groups that are directed from outside the university by power structures and parties. From the statement: The issue of the danger of executing people in the prisons of the Islamic Republic, especially political prisoners, today holds significant importance compared to many other foreign issues. The statement reads: The university is not supposed to be the voice of a specific idea or a social vision, but in recent years, movements with dangerous ideas have been trying to pass themselves off as the voice of all students. The signing students criticized a movement that, according to them, "under the guise of freedom-seeking, liberalism, etc., misleads society and the university" and added: "The Islamic Republic itself, as a warlike government that needs a militarized and security condition for further repression, is now acting alongside other warlike governments in the region and extra-regional forces, and its goal is more than what it claims to be national security, namely the expansion of influence and regional grandeur." They emphasized that "every voice supporting war, occupation, sanctions, etc., heard these days, has not been and is not the voice of the generality and majority of students" and added: "For most students in Iran, the issues of Iran itself are of primary importance." The statement refers to the issuance and enforcement of death sentences, which have significantly increased in the past year. In this statement, it is mentioned that the issue of the danger of executing people in the prisons of the Islamic Republic, especially political prisoners, today holds significant importance compared to many other foreign issues. The signing students, referring to the existence of "a multitude of oppressions" in Iran and including in universities, wrote that "local selection quotas, the lack of teaching local languages, and the lack of budget allocation to universities in peripheral areas" are manifestations of this oppression that directly harms us students from various ethnicities and nations. They also criticized a movement that either intentionally or unintentionally overlooks other economic oppressions and discrimination and religious oppression (which is often greater than ethnic and national oppression) and added: "If there is oppression under the title of imposing a single language on the languages of other ethnicities, this oppression primarily affects the children of workers, marginalized people, and villagers, preventing them from education." The issue of "retirees and the pension fund crisis" is also addressed in this statement, and the signatories accused the government of "constantly beating the drum of late retirement and increasing the retirement age," stating that in addition to failing to resolve the issue of the inflow of active workers into the funds, it owes more than 900 trillion tomans to pension funds and has not paid this accumulated debt since decades ago, and every year pays only a small and insignificant portion of its debt, which is increasing daily. According to them, the mega-crisis of pension funds, which is currently adorned with fancy and luxurious names like "discrepancy," will ultimately lead to the situation where, at the time of retirement for today's students, there will effectively be no such thing as a pension, and the government will also be unable to pay retirees' pensions. The statement indicates that "to solve the pension fund problem, all remaining state-owned companies should be transferred to the workers' pension funds instead of privatization, so that both the government's looting of the funds can be prevented by paying off its debts and millions of workers (including unstable Iranian workers and Afghan workers) can be insured and the funds saved."