A Collective Statement by Student Organizations in Support of Imprisoned Students
These lines are written in an atmosphere where every voice, every step, and every action is watched with a cold and soulless gaze. An atmosphere in which the university has been placed under a garrison-like surveillance, and the student must transform from a free citizen into an obedient subject. Any gathering to analyze and discuss collective grievances is labeled “assembly and collusion,” a social-media report on the current situation is deemed propaganda against the ruling regime, and any critical or dissenting voice against anti-people policies is considered an act against the very security of that nation. In a sense, we speak of an era in which our everyday lives have been criminalized—and the result of this policy is that some of our classmates have been put behind bars, based on allegations lacking transparent evidence or the possibility of a fair trial.
Our classmate in detention, even before entering prison, saw his right to education stripped away, his right to pick up a pen, his right to breathe the air of the university. But once the prison door closes behind our classmate, a new wave of suffering begins. The right to visit family and even the right to a simple phone call is easily denied. Some students are exiled from one prison to another, from one city to another, as if their crime is not an action but their very existence. Interrogations, sometimes arbitrary, and solitary confinement—designed in practice to suffocate the spirit—alongside legal limbo that may last months or years, are only part of these torments.
But these punishments do not end in prison. Deprivation of public services after release—from the right to employment to access to social facilities—serves as a lifelong punishment, whose heavy shadow hangs over these students even after they regain their freedom. These conditions not only wear down their bodies and souls but also rob them of their dreams and futures.
The policy of incarcerating students goes beyond punishing their individual actions and reducing the issue to a legal case diminishes the broader problem of university repression. This policy is a tool to silence the collective voice of students and to cement a domineering order that fears protest. Prison is not merely a place to carry out sentences but a daily warning to others. This repression is not a transient phenomenon but a historically rooted, organized policy that endures through regime changes and their colorful promises. It is a policy that, regardless of the divisions between executive and judicial branches—and often with their collusion—has always sought to purge the university of politics and silence voices outside the rulers’ dictates. Therefore, it constitutes a grand governmental strategy: by drawing ever-narrower red lines and redefining the permissible boundaries of student activism, by imposing heavy costs, it pushes students toward self-censorship and exhausts the student movement. There must always be some of us in prison as a concrete example to deter others from action.
We believe that the path to liberation lies not in retreat but in crossing these red lines drawn against us; lines that only collective steadfastness can invalidate. We will be the voice of all imprisoned students, reminding everyone that silence will not be our response to repression.
Signing Organizations:
The Freethinkers’ Association, Allameh University
Arman Association, Iran University of Science & Technology
Royesh Association, Iran University of Science & Technology
Islamic Association, Khajeh Nasir al-Din Tusi University of Technology
Islamic Assembly, Alzahra University
Islamic Association, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran
