Some four to five thousand students staged a demonstration today outside Tehran University, chanting "guns, tanks and Bassij are no longer effective" and "free all political prisoners." The students chanted against the ruling clerics.

Demonstrators vented their anger against the election sham staged by the ruling dictatorship. When Hashem Aghajari, a leading figure in Khatami’s camp, went to the podium and appealed for calm and urged the crowd not to chant slogans against clerical rulers, the demonstrators booed and heckled him.

[Reuters reported from Tehran: Hashemi Rafsanjani was the clearest target of the student attack. "Hashemi, Hashemi, shame on you.... Leave the country alone," chanted the students.

["People are aware. They are disgusted with Rafsanjani," they said, demanding that banned publications be reopened and political prisoners freed.

[Riot police and secret agents took position around a main square near the university. Unlike the last two years, Khatami did not attend an official ceremony to mark his 1997 election in an apparent attempt not to heighten political tension.]
 

Khatami Still Powerless Three Years After Election, Agence France Presse, May 22

Three years after his election, Khatami's hands are still politically tied and his economic record poor.

"For a year, everyone had their eyes fixed on the new parliament. Khatami was waiting for its confirmation, to get elbowroom. He has the parliament he wanted. But it is clear that his maneuverability remains limited," one European diplomat told AFP.

"For the youth… the president's lack of power (with the conservatives) is notably felt on the larger issues of foreign policy, and public and fundamental freedoms," said Daryouch Abdali, an analyst.
 

Another Revolutionary Guard Becomes Director of A "Reformist" Newspaper!, Agence France Presse, May 22

TEHRAN - A new "reformist" newspaper [Mellat] hit Tehran newsstands Monday.

Its director is Saeed Haghi, a former member of the Revolutionary Guards.
 

Rights Abuses Persist in Iran, The Los Angeles Times, May 22

With each succeeding lash to his back, the bound man sagged deeper, oblivious to the cries of "God is great!" from the crowd. They gathered to watch the slow, painful death of a soldier convicted by a clergy-run Iranian court. The charge: moral corruption.

Two others were buried up to their chests and then stoned to death for the same crime.

Captured on 1991 videotape smuggled out of Iran, the images of oppression show a side of the Islamic government that many expatriates say Americans should know still exists under President Mohammad Khatami. He is the same president who has talked of culture and educational exchanges with the United States, a charismatic leader to whom the Clinton administration is making overtures…

But evidence is mounting that human rights violations long associated with the Islamic Republic persist, according to Clinton policy critics.

The White House has "left human rights and democracy out of the equation," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) told the 150 people gathered at Occidental College...

Plans should be made to help Iranians when the Islamic government collapses, which it is bound to do as citizens grow increasingly restless with the clergy's rule, said Michael Warder, vice president of the Claremont Institute, who also spoke at the symposium.

"Likely there will be a time of chaos. Are we in the United States ready for such an eventuality?" Warder asked. "I do not believe so. No, [instead] we are importing pistachio nuts."

In the first two decades of Islamic rule, as many as 120,000 Iranians have been sentenced to death, Warder said. Since Khatami came to power in August 1997, abuses have persisted, he and others say.

Warder said there have been 24 assassinations orchestrated by Khatami government agents. "The recent shutdown of 17 reformist publications does seem to have caught the attention of the American press," he said, but even that story is fading.

Afsaneh Rahimi, 36, who spent three years in an Iranian prison and now lives in Santa Monica, said... "I still feel the slaps as if it was yesterday," she said, recounting the terror of being flogged and beaten. She said she also heard other prisoners being raped.

Like Rahimi, four other survivors of torture in Iranian prisons shared their tales. Some said they had been tied to wooden beds and had their feet beaten with sticks until they passed out. Guards would wait for them to regain consciousness, for the feeling to return to the bleeding feet, before they began the beatings anew.

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