Iran cracks down on student protests in universities

Iranian students are besieged by an official clampdown in the universities, with a wave of arrests and expulsions.
This pre-emptive tactic is in anticipation of a major anti-government protest to be held on Monday.

Police enforce rule
In addition, authorities are intensifying enforcement of Islamic morals on women's dress and men's hair length, to further punish and discourage political dissence and civil unrest.

Students confined to campus
Students report that authorities have cracked down at campuses nationwide, in an attempt to prevent the demonstrations from becoming widespread. Students recruited as informers by the pro-government Basij militiamen are being told to be more watchful and to inform on any classmates suspected of being pro-opposition "troublemakers."

Police Statement issued
The police warned of a tough response, especially if demonstrators try to break out of their containent area inside the campuses and into the streets. "Any gathering or ceremony outside the permitted designated places will be considered illegal and an act of provocation towards the authorities. If this happens then the police will take quick, forceful and decisive action," a statement said.

Thought Control
The crackdown was described by students as part of a widespread government campaign to control, not only internal 'security' issues but also 'open thinking and new ideas' at universities. Universities are often perceived as strongholds of revelution and reform movements in oppressive regimes. Iran believes that the universities are behind the unrest and public demonstartions that took to the streets after the disputed presidential election in June.

Courses Banned
The university curriculums have also been taken under the control of the authorities. Some courses seen as too Western-based and promoting free thinking, have been replaced with more strict "Islamic" fundamental ones, students say.

Abuse of Women
Since classes began in October at Tehran's prestigious Sharif University of Technology, members of "herasat," a feared force of guards and morals police in universities, have been instilling fear and repression by policing student behaviour. Openly stopping and abusing women at campus gates for wearing clothes that are too colourful or not all-covering enough.

Herasat's role in oppression
A herasat official uses a cellphone to photograph male students with long hair or those wearing colorful T-shirts, said Kouhyar Goudarzi. "If a student complains, he grabs his student card and says 'when you look like a human being, you will get your card back,"' he said.

"Student dissatisfaction has reached a point where it's about to explode," he said.

Expulsion as punishment
Goudarzi, a 23-year-old aerospace student, said he was expelled because he spoke to the BBC's Persian TV service about a campus demonstration in October.

Aggressive surveillance
"Six months later, the fire is still burning," said Atieh Vahidmanesh, a 24-year-old economics post-grad at Sharif University. "We are under aggressive surveillance."

"Not all our sympathisers are active themselves, many are afraid to come to the protest," said one student leader at Tehran's Allameh Tabatabei University who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of further persecution.

"We are not calling on others to participate because we don't want them to pay the high price of protest in Iran," he said.

Pro-governemnt students
Some pro-government students on campus dismiss such talk. "The western media are used to exaggerating issues," said Mahdi Eslami. "I don't feel there's been any change in the atmosphere of universities." Interestingly, the pro-government supporters have no fear of retribution from speaking to the press and are open to their names being revealed to the press.

Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a political science professor at Tehran's Allameh Tabatabaei, a leading humanities university, said "it's not a police atmosphere at the university. Students are stricly controlled, but not openly"; e.g. new students are confined to separate dorms, to shield them from 'contamination' from older, more politicised students, he said.

China: 43 Uighur men have 'disappeared'

Months after security forces seized them in the wake of ethnic riots in July, at least 43 ethnic Uighur men from far western China have disappeared, an advocacy group said in a report released on Wednesday.

The report, by Human Rights Watch, asserted that the number of vanished Uighurs was likely higher, although the group could conclusively document only 43 cases during weeks of secret investigations in the Xinjiang region of China.

At least 197 people died and another 1,600 were injured during three days of protests and rioting by thousands of Uighurs in early July in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. The riots, the worst ethnic violence in recent Chinese history, led police and security forces to round up hundreds of Uighurs, mostly men, in subsequent weeks.

State-run newspapers have reported that more than 200 persons were charged with crimes in connection with the protests, and 19 Uighur men were sentenced this month — 11 to death, 3 to life in prison — for their roles in the violence. In a separate trial, one man with an ethnic Han surname received a death sentence and another was given a prison term of 10 years.

The government has insisted that those accused of violence have been treated in accordance with Chinese law, which requires authorities to give detained suspects access to lawyers and to tell suspects’ families where they have been detained and why.

The Human Rights Watch report disputes that, stating that in most cases, “the men and boys detained in the course of these sweeps and raids have been missing since the security forces took them away.”

“Their families’ attempts to inquire about the relatives at local police stations or with other law-enforcement agencies proved futile,” the report stated. “The authorities either said they had no knowledge of the arrests, or claimed the inquiry was still ongoing without admitting the fact of detention, or simply chased the families away.”

The report called the 43 cases “enforced disappearances,” saying they “are serious violations of international human-rights law” as well as Chinese law.

A request for Chinese government comment on the report, sent by fax at the government’s request, was not immediately answered.

The 48-page report involved random interviews with “many dozens” of Uighur residents of Urumqi and at least two dozen Urumqi residents who were Han, the ethnic group that makes up 90 percent of China’s population. Most of the violence in the July riots was directed at the Han who have become the more prosperous majority in what was once a Uighur-dominated city.

The report states that while almost every Uighur interviewee claimed to know a friend, relative or acquaintance who had gone missing after being detained by security forces, only a few were willing to give detailed accounts of the disappearances for fear of punishment by authorities.

The unaccounted-for detainees, all males, were as young as 14, but most were in their twenties, the report stated. Many were said to have disappeared during large-scale roundups of Uighur men conducted by security forces in Urumqi neighborhoods in the days after the riots. But others were seized in what the report called “targeted raids” in ethnic Uighur parts of the capital.

Witnesses were sometimes uncertain who had detained the suspects, but other people interviewed for the report mentioned the Chinese military, the local police and the People’s Armed Police, a national paramilitary force that often responds to natural disasters and public disturbances.

The report cited witnesses’ accounts of the detentions of 11 Uighur men, none of whom has been seen since. In one case, witnesses were quoted as saying that some 150 police officers and soldiers sealed off a street in Saimachang, a predominantly Uighur neighborhood, on July 6, the day after the protests began.

“Women and elderly were told to stand aside, and all men, 12 to 45 years old, were all lined up against the wall,” one witness was quoted as saying. “Police and the military were examining the men to see if they had any bruises or wounds. They also asked where they had been on July 5 and 6. They beat the men randomly, even the older ones — our 70 year-old neighbor was punched and kicked several times.”

The witnesses said that 17 men were taken away, including the 25-year-old husband of one of the witnesses. “She has not heard anything about her husband’s fate since then,” the report stated.

A woman in a second Uighur neighborhood, Erdaoqiao, said that three men in civilian clothes came to her home July 28. Identifying themselves as police officers, they took away her 18-year-old son for questioning, saying he would be freed in a couple of days.

“It’s been more than three weeks and I have no idea where he is and whether he is still alive,” she said. “I went to the local police station twice — they did not say whether he was there or not, but said the inquiry was still ongoing.”

Another witness said the soldiers seized her 14-year-old brother, apparently injuring his leg, after he left his Erdaoqiao home to go to his father’s shop on the morning of August 7. Family members said they tracked the boy to a local hospital, where he was treated, but he was then placed in a truck and driven away.

The boy has not been seen since, the report said. Police officers in the neighborhood told the family that he is not on their list of detained people.

Human Rights Watch said the Chinese government has not responded to an August 24 request to give an account of the deaths, arrests and detentions stemming from the Urumqi riots. The group urged Navanethem Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, to investigate the events in Xinjiang.

The group has posted its report on its Web site, which the Chinese government blocks its citizens from accessing.

Chinese Teenager Killed At Internet Addict Boot Camp

An innocent 15-year-old boy has reportedly been beaten to death by Chinese 'Tutors' hours after arriving at a boot camp for internet addicts in China.

The teenager was declared dead after arriving at hospital in the nearby town of Wuxu. This incident happens only weeks after 'Electirc Shock' treatment is banned.

Deng Senshan was sent to the camp for a month to 'cure' him of his 'addiction'. Police are investigating the incident after Deng Senshan was found with multiple injuries over his body.

They have arrested four trainers from the camp, which attempts to 'cure' youngsters of their web 'addiction' by forcing them to replace hours in front of the computer with gruelling military-style drills.

The boy's father Deng Fei told how he paid 7,000 yuan (£600) to send his son to Guangxi Qihang Survival Training Camp for a month.

He said his son was put in solitary confinement within hours of his arrival and was then beaten to death by staff after they "scolded" him for running too slowly.

"My son was very healthy and was not a criminal. He just had an internet addiction when I left him at the camp," he said. "The police informed us that our child had died. We can't believe our only son was beaten to death."

Our methods are tough but do not include torture or other methods that might damage a child's health. - Guangxi Qihang Survival Training Camp's Mission Statement

China Human rights violations: China Finally bans electric shock treatment for Internet addiction

Internet Webmasters and Bloggers have written about being tied down and given electric shocks for 30 minutes at a time at one notorious hospital

China has finally banned the use of shock therapy to treat, what they describe as, ' Internet addiction', after its use at one hospital sparked nationwide controversy.

Widespread Protests
The hospital drew widespread protests and media coverage in recent months after Internet users, claiming to have received shock treatment, wrote in their blogs and forums about being tied down and subjected to electric shocks for 30 minutes at a time.

Chinese Health Ministry
A statement on the Chinese health ministry's Web site said the practice had no medical foundation and forbid its clinical use. The order banned the practice nationwide but specifically mentioned the notorious hospital in eastern Shandong province.

Shandong Hospital
Calls to the notorious Shandong hospital went unanswered Wednesday morning, but a hospital spokeswoman last week said "sensationalised" media reports had already led it to a cesation of the shock treatment. The shocks were meant to cause subjects to associate a negative result with Internet use, according to the hospital. Subjects were forced to admit to faults in their behaviour and thinking, while receiving the electric shocks.

Government Funded
Government-funded treatment centers for Internet addiction have sprouted up around China in recent years, though the health ministry has not officially labeled it a diagnosable condition. Many children are coerced and tricked by parents into going to the centres, which often deliver a mix of military boot camp treat ment and shock therapy sessions.

World of Warcraft
Staff at the 'treatment centres' blame hugely popular online games like World of Warcraft for getting most Chinese teens hooked on the Web.

Many Chinese medical experts still believe that electric shock treatment for Internet addiction and other 'behavioural issues' does not harm children, but others disavow it, said Tao Ran, during a recent interview. He is the founder of a Beijing 'treatment centre' for Web-addicted teens. Experts meeting at the health ministry last month signed a document recommending its ban, he said.

Internet users celebrated the move

"This news should truly make people happy," one user wrote in a forum run by local search engine Baidu. "After all, this kind of thing is inhuman cruelty."