Wednesday, Jul. 08, 2009

Students at SIUE rally to back Iranian election protest

Rally at SIUE shows support

EDWARDSVILLE -- For Hasti, watching the turmoil in Iran isn't some distant foreign-news story: it's about her home.

Hasti, 23, is a student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a native of Iran. She came to SIUE four years ago to study chemistry.

Hasti gathered with about 15 classmates and her professor to rally in support of the Iranian demonstrators protesting the controversial election in their country.

But Hasti declined to give her last name, for fear of reprisals against her family back home.

"My whole family is back there, and my friends," she said. She knows they are currently safe, but she said watching the turmoil from so far away has been "devastating."

"Whatever will happen is in the hands of the people of Iran," she said. "But we wanted to let the world know what is going on."

Sadegh Khazaeli, an Iranian chemistry professor, called the turmoil "heartbreaking." Khazaeli came to the United States in 1977 to pursue his doctorate and came to SIUE as a teacher in 1982.

The biggest concern, he said, is the thousands of protesters arrested who may be tried as "enemies of God" and executed.

In Iran on Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought to put the turmoil over the disputed presidential elections behind him and declared on national television that the contests were clean, fair and marked the start of a new era.

His speech came as the country's top three reformist leaders -- including opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims to have won the June 12 election -- sought to rekindle their opposition movement, demanding that ruling clerics end the heavy "security atmosphere" imposed after the elections and free those detained in the unrest, according to an opposition Web site.

In Edwardsville, the students held signs that read, "Where is my vote?" "Free political prisoners," and several remembering Neda Agha-Soltan, a young woman shot in the streets before cameras who has become a symbol for the protests.

Two Edwardsville police officers were present at the rally to make sure no one harassed them -- something Khazaeli noted as a benefit of freedom. "That is one of the things we like about democracy, and people here take it for granted," he said.

One of the signs read, "We did not throw rocks at them, we cried, 'We want freedom.' They shot us."

At first, Khazaeli said, there was a lot of attention worldwide on Iran. "But then the government kicked out all the reporters and cracked down on the demonstrators," he said, and the world's attention drifted.

But he predicts Thursday will be a day to watch. It is the 10th anniversary of a student protest that turned violent in Iran, with students "thrown out of dormitory windows" by police, he said.

Khazaeli said the rally called for release of the imprisoned demonstrators; punishment of those responsible for the deaths of demonstrators; and support and pressure from the international community to stop possible executions.

Reza, an older man protesting with the students, was a philosophy professor in Iran and has been visiting in Illinois for a week. He also declined to give his last name.

The Iranian protests have been coming for a long time, Reza said. "It's complicated, it has roots ... it is the voice which was raised because of long-overdue wishes and political ideals," he said. The protesters of the June election held peaceful -- even silent -- protests, and then they were silenced, he said.

The misconception the United States has held for so long, Reza said, is that Iranians were happy with their leaders. "The prevailing mood (in the United States) now is much better," he said. "They begin to understand that Iranians are not for a theocratic government. They deserve a more democratic and globally verifiable government."

It is the Internet, Reza said, that has put the Iran protests on the minds of Americans and changed viewpoints on the region. "They are bypassing the conventional channels of communication to devise their own, popular means to getting to know one another," Reza said.

Meanwhile, the students at SIUE held up signs that read, "We are all Neda," and "We will win."