June 30, 2009
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran
c/o H.E. Mohammad Khazaee
Ambassador of Iran to the United Nations
Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations
622 ird Ave. New York, NY 10017
Fax: (212) 867-7086
Your Excellency,
On 29 April, 2009, I wrote to you on behalf of
the Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) of the Middle East Studies Association
of North America (MESA) to express our grave concern regarding the large-scale
wave of intimidation, arrests, and campus expulsions carried out by Iranian
security forces against peaceful student activists and protesters on various
university campuses throughout Iran since December 2008, in violation of
international laws to which Iran is a signatory as well as the Islamic Republic
of Iran's own constitutional guarantees of free speech and peaceful assembly.
I now write to you again, this time to voice
CAF's serious concern over the murders, mass arrests, brutal beatings, and
widespread harassment of Iranian university students in the aftermath of the
June 12, 2009, disputed Iranian presidential elections and the ransacking of
university dormitories by security forces in a number of cities. In particular,
we are extremely alarmed by the confirmed killing of at least 5 unarmed students
at the Tehran University dormitory complex (on June 14), which were carried out
by university security forces and members of the paramilitary Basij volunteer
militia (tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and formally under the
direct command of Your Excellency, also with ties to the Interior Ministry of
the Islamic Republic of Iran and avowed loyalty to the current president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad). We are also seriously concerned about the safety of the reportedly
hundreds of detained and "disappeared" peaceful student activists who have been
rounded up during security raids on and off university campuses across the
country since the June 12 elections and these students' lack of access to
constitutional due process of law. Needless to say, we remain vigilant about the
treatment of the former student detainees and reiterate our previous request
that Iranian authorities investigate and terminate all abuse of power by the
various security forces directed against peaceful student activists and
academics.
MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship
and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. e preeminent organization in
the field, MESA publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and
has more than 3000 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic
freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with
the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.
MESA again calls on Iranian authorities to
respect and guarantee the full rights of academic and intellectual freedom,
freedom of expression, and the right to peaceful assembly on all university
campuses. We welcome the recent call by members of the Iranian parliament
(including the parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani) on interior minister Sadeq
Mahsouli to account for "why students were injured or even killed," as reported
on the official Iranian English language
Press
TV website. We hope the Iranian parliament will conduct a full investigation
into the recent grievous targeted, as well as random, assaults against students
by the security forces and the use of excessive force in quelling peaceful
student protests throughout the country in general, calling for the prosecution
of all those responsible for such abuses.
MESA most strongly and unequivocally condemns the
reprehensible premeditated use of lethal force and unwarranted and gratuitous
violent tactics of intimidation against students by the offi cial government and
university security forces and the Basij militia and other officially-sponsored
vigilante groups. MESA urges you, the Iranian state apparatus, the Iranian
president, the heads of the various governmental and state-sponsored security
forces, as well as the university officials responsible for campus security, to
guarantee the rights of students and academics to free speech and peaceful
assembly. We urge that Iranian authorities immediately overturn all punitive
measures against the students in question and release all arrested students
engaged in peaceful acts of protest and free speech--many of whom are feared to
be subject to harsh treatment and physical torture in violation of Iranian law.
We additionally urge the authorities to refrain from intimidation, reprimand,
and punishment in any form of the faculty on various university campuses who
have bravely condemned the "security" terror tactics directed against peaceful
student activists on university campuses and the wanton damage caused to student
dormitories, with a number of such faculty resigning their posts in protest.
We again feel compelled to remind you, Your
Excellency, that the rights of individuals to freedom of thought, opinion, and
speech are explicitly protected under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic
of Iran (Article 23), as well as the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (Articles 18, 19, 21), to which the Islamic Republic of Iran is
a signatory. The arbitrary persecution and maltreatment of students on
university campuses can only be conceived as a direct attack on the principles
of academic freedom and critical intellectual inquiry.
We trust that you appreciate the gravity of these
developments and we urge you to use all channels and take all appropriate
measures in securing and protecting freedom of expression and the right of
peaceful assembly on Iranian university campuses and by students and academics
in general.
Sincerely,
Virginia H. Aksan, PhD
MESA President
Department of History, McMaster University
