In a massive protest in downtown Tehran with chants of “death to dictator,” thousands of students from Tehran universities declared their abhorrence at the slaughter of innocent passengers of a Ukrainian airliner and called for resignation of Ali Khamenei, the mullahs’ supreme leader. Female students actively pioneered the protests in all scenes.
Saturday, January 11, 2020, students of Tehran University, Amir Kabir University, Sharif Industrial University, Allameh Tabatabaii University, Teachers’ Training University and others took to the streets. Chanting, “Command-in-Chief of Armed Forces, resign, resign,” they marched in Hafez Avenue in downtown Tehran and called for the overthrow of Khamenei’s regime.
Security forces raided the protesters and used tear gas to disperse them. They shut down the gates of the University, locking in those still inside the campus. Female students confronted the anti-riot units and calling them scoundrels. The protesters also tore down picture of Soleimani.
The students chanted radical slogans, most of them directed against the mullahs’ supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Their chants included, “1,500 killed in November,” “Death to this theocracy, for crimes in all these years,” “Soleimani was a murderer, his leader is a murderer, too,” “We did not give our lives to compromise and praise the murderous leader,” “Don’t call us seditionist, you are the sedition, you the oppressor,” “Khamenei shame on you, leave the country alone,” “IRGC shame on you, leave the country alone,” “student dies but does not succumb,” etc.
The protests came in the wake of the clerical regime accepting the responsibility of downing of the Ukrainian airliner killing 176 innocent passengers and crew on board. The regime said the IRGC anti-aircraft systems had struck the Ukrainian flight due to human error.
Prior to the protests Saturday evening, the students of Tehran University of Art and Tehran’s Amir Kabir University held vigils to commemorate the victims of the Ukrainian plane crash.
A number of students of Sharif Industrial University, Tehran University and Amir Kabir University were among the victims. The names of some of the female students who died in the downing of the Ukrainian airliner follows:
Nassim Rahmanifar, Elma Oladi, Shadi Jamshidi, Pouneh Gorji, Parinaz Ghaderpanah, Saba Sa’adat, Sara Sa’adat, Delaram Dadash-Nejad, Marzieh Forutan, Zeinab Assadi Lari, Azar Mamani, Sara Mamani, Ayda Farzaneh, Ghazal Nourian, Sajedeh Sara’iyan, and Ghanimat Ajdari.
Some physicians and university professors were also among the women killed in the Ukrainian plane disaster: Mojgan Daneshmand, professor of engineering in University of Alberta in Canada, Shokoufeh Choupan-Nejad, gynecologist; Neda Sediqi, surgeon and an ophthalmologist.
