About 500 students rallied Monday at Tehran University to call for democracy and the release of intellectuals and journalists jailed by the Iranian government.
"Free political prisoners!" and "Reform the judiciary!" chanted the students, who were organized by the Office to Consolidate Unity (OCU), a pro-reform student movement that ardently supports President Mohammad Khatami.
"We do not want democracy to put aside religion, but we do not want democracy to be trampled on by people in religious clothing," Hashem Aghajani, a leader of the OCU, told the crowd.
He referred to the woes of Khatami and his legislative allies, elected respectively with nearly 80 percent of the vote in 1997 and 2000 but under extreme pressure from religious conservatives.
"There is no gulf between the religious and the secular, but there is a gulf between the majority and the minority. How can ideas that garnered 80 percent of the vote have only 20 percent of the power?" he asked, alluding to the power of conservative-dominated institutions such as the judiciary.
"It is shameful that intellectuals and journalists have been the principal victims of this judiciary," Aghajani said.
The student demonstrators also showered praise on late prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who nationalized Iran's oil industry in 1951 and was ousted two years later in a CIA-backed coup.
Aghajani justified the taking of hostages at the US embassy in Tehran, as Iran commemorates the 21st anniversary of the event.
"That was a spontaneous action. But there were no laws in our country, and that's no longer the way we need to express ourselves now," he said to applause – TEHRAN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
