Masthead graphic based on a painting by Gudrun Thriemer.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Robert Fisk, "Claims of student massacre In Tehran spread," Independent, June 16, 2009.

[Fisk is in Iran. That is reassuring though it is no easier to figure out what is really happening. This is one of three reports from there, one on the 14th, another, in addition to this one, on the 16th. -jlt]

Tehran University looked as calm as any summer campus. So much for the latest rumours of a bloodbath. Another piece of Iranian fiction, served up on YouTube. Scarved female students were moving through the university's great black iron gates. I asked my driver, Ali, to drop me off at the corner so I could prowl the college bookshops on Engelob Street, I was looking for a volume of modern Persian poetry for a friend. I did not at first hear the man at the cash desk, motioning out the door.

I peered out. The gates of the university were now shut. Behind them was a crowd of hundreds of young men and women, many wearing scarves over their mouths. I crossed the road. And the banners behind those forbidding gates told a frightening story. "Today is a day of mourning," one of them read. "Dignified students are mourners today." "Police, shame on you, shame on you." "Tell my mother – she doesn't have a son any more."

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