Students Heckle Ahmadinejad, Set Fire To His Picture

I would like to praise the students of Columbia University for finally having the guts and morality to "speak truth to power" when it comes to a tyrant.

Oh, wait. It wasn't students at Columbia, where only Minutemen get heckled and stage-charged. It was at Teheran University.

"Some students chanted radical slogans and inflamed the atmosphere of the meeting" at the Amir Kabir University, said the semi-official Fars news agency on Monday, which is close to Ahmadinejad.

"A small number of students shouted 'death to the dictator' and smashed cameras of state television but they were confronted by a bigger group of students in the hall chanting: 'We support Ahmadinejad'," it said.

It was the latest in a series of student demonstrations in recent days, the first time in least two years that such protests have taken place on this scale at Iranian universities.

Ahmadinejad responded by describing those students chanting the slogans as an "oppressive" minority.

"A small number of people who claim there is oppression are creating oppression and do not let the majority hear (my) words," he said.

...

The Iranian president's speech was also interrupted by firecrackers, ISNA said.

The firecrackers thing may be a disruption with an additional significance. Zoroasterism is despised by the Islamist government, but many express their rebellion at the government by observing ancient Zorasterist fire-rituals. A lot of reports of "students burning things in the streets" are just overhyped reports about people engaging in setting symbolic (but not vandalistic) fires and shooting fireworks.

posted by Ace at 03:00 PM

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