IRAN: Scores of hardline Islamic militia, some with sticks, attacked pro-reform students at a Tehran university yesterday as they chanted slogans calling for the release of political prisoners.
The violence erupted when one of the speakers at the pro-reform student rally said Iranians were "paying the price of our fathers' mistakes".
The hardliners, angered by the apparent insult to the 1979 Islamic revolution which brought clerical leaders to power, attacked the podium, broke the microphone and then started punching students, beating them with sticks and spraying pepper spray in their faces.
The students fought back and at least six students and one hardliner were injured in the violence, the latest to take place during a recent wave of pro-reform protests.
"Some 150 hardliners attacked the gathering and beat the students and also took away some others," Sajjad, a student leader who declined to give his second name, said.
Political tension has heightened in Iran since last month when the country's judiciary sentenced reformist academic Hashem Aghajari to death for questioning clerical rule. The verdict, which is now under review, sparked the largest pro-reform protests seen in the Islamic Republic for over three years.
Students have staged almost daily gatherings demanding the release of political dissidents as well as major political reforms in a country where President Mohammad Khatami's efforts to improve democracy and social freedoms have been blocked by powerful conservatives.
An opinion poll by the Iran Student Polling Centre, published in the Etemad newspaper yesterday, found that 78 per cent of Tehran citizens thought President Khatami should take a tougher line with his political adversaries. The poll also found that 47.5 per cent thought his reform programme would fail.
Many reformists are urging President Khatami to resign if, as expected, hardliners block two bills he has proposed to curb the power of the hardline judiciary and a conservative watchdog that vets legislation and election candidates.
Witnesses said hundreds of students from other universities, eager to join yesterday's rally, had forced open the university gates. That, in turn, allowed dozens of hardline militia, known as Basij, to enter the campus.
The Basij operates mostly as a plainclothes body which enforces the Republic's strict moral code and is faithful to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
By afternoon yesterday, the clashes had ended and most of the students and Basij had left the university.