EP: Student protests in Iran

Last week, students in Iran were arrested for protesting against the election results. News messages and rumours were circulating the Internet, but still it was hard to find out what exactly happened.

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on 25/06/2009

Student protests in Iran

On Twitter, one news message is posted after the other. Some 120 academics of the University of Teheran resigned after a police raid. Student dormitories in the entire country are stormed. Some 150 students of the northern University of Mazanderan are said to have been arrested. In other places, people have apparently been killed.

The BBC has uploaded footage which appears to show militia attacking a university dormitory. The broadcasting company cannot confirm the source.

According to a Dutch student of Iranian origin, there are about ten reliable sources on Twitter. “Often, their news is spread on CNN or other news channels the following day. The messages are taken up by other twitterers as soon as possible, not just to spread the news, but also to make it harder for the Iranian militia to track these people down.”

In Iran, protests began when incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the elections by a landslide. The opposition could not believe that their leader Mir Hossein Mousavi had lost and claims widespread fraud was involved.