Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace laureate, together with a number of international human rights and student organizations, has launched a campaign called “Be the voice of enchained students.”
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, one of the supporters of this campaign, reports that it has been established to be the voice of jailed and banned students.
The campaign is a response to a call issued by the Iranian student organizations Tahkim-e Vahdat and Danesh Amoukhtegan, which called on all Iranian activists and organizations inside and outside Iran to announce their support for jailed students and protest against their continued incarceration.
The Tahkim-e Vahdat student organization also provided Ahmad Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, with a comprehensive report about government persecution of students in Iran. According to this report, the Islamic Republic had committed at least 2,000 violations of students’ rights from April 2009 to September of 2011.
After the election protests of 2009, many students were arrested for having joined protests and many more were suspended or expelled from university and banned from continuing their education.
Currently, 29 students are serving long sentences in Iranian prisons. Several other students who received jail terms are currently out on bail and may be summoned at any time to report to prison and serve out their sentence.
