A State of Fear (5 page)

I
n the late 1970s the Iranian government faced an economic crisis and its counter-inflationary policies led to strikes and even uprisings. No one was left untouched. The millions that had been ruined by the Shah’s policies and now lived in the shanty towns saw their squalid corrugated-iron shacks bulldozed. When they protested, guns were turned on them. But there were more protests, uprisings and massacres and each was larger and angrier than the last. The state response became bloodier, culminating in South Tehran in September 1977 with an outright massacre. Tanks and helicopter gunships tore through wide swathes of Tehran’s poor and hungry.

The world of academia was not left untouched. The university of Tehran sat in the centre of the city. To the north of the campus lay the villas of the rich and to the south were the shanty towns. From the top floor of the main block, you could – and still can – see the rift through Iranian society expressed in that division through its capital. My colleagues at the university saw the tanks roll through the city centre and
heard the whirr of the helicopters overhead. Every day the papers brought further reports of repression. When I say we saw blood in the streets, I am not speaking metaphorically. On that terrible day when the Shah’s troops slaughtered thousands in Tehran, there were rivers of red flowing across the pavements and down the gutters.

After each massacre there was a shocked silence. A small group of us at the university decided we would speak out. Out of a staff of three thousand, a hundred of us signed an open letter of condemnation. It was a small voice circulated and republished by the opposition press, read in the factories, the bazaar, and even at prayer in the mosques. It spread far and wide.

The confidence of the people was growing. In the middle of the government campaign against rising prices, oil workers actually secured a wage increase of 20 per cent. Their success spearheaded a wave of brave strikes at a time when some shopkeepers were actually jailed for raising prices by the equivalent of one tenth of a penny.

Although there were no legal unions, Iranian workers came together to use their new-found strength. They extended their demands to include freedom of the press, breaking the state monopoly on television and releasing thousands of political prisoners. In late 1978 student activists held a university-wide sit-in. Their demands echoed those of other workers and it did not take long for the Shah’s minions to identify this centre for education as a hotspot of trouble. All universities were closed. But this just spread the opposition further afield as students took their demands to factories and shanty towns.

University staff were barred from entering the empty buildings and began a process of consultation. I was elected as one of the two representatives from the Economics faculty. We decided that an occupation of the university was the most appropriate response to the Shah’s actions. Around 30 of us – one from each department – walked through the police cordon
and went to see the chancellor. Filing into his room in the administration block at the centre of the campus, we demanded that the university be immediately reopened.

‘It is not my decision,’ he told us. ‘His Majesty and the military governor of Tehran must decide that’.

For two hours we haggled. Things became heated. Some of my older colleagues even began brandished their walking sticks to emphasise their arguments. Eventually the chancellor stormed out, slamming the door behind him. We barred the doors and phoned the university faculties and student groups.

‘The occupation’s on!’

As others arrived, university officials cleaned their desks and left. Within just 24 hours we were in control of the entire administration block. The oil and electricity workers were out on strike again but we still had power. While the Shah ate cold chicken by candlelight, our five-storey block was a brilliantly illuminated watch-tower. It was an unforgettable symbol of solidarity. Looking out over the city we could see the pin-pricks of millions of candles in the blackness. Unfortunately, our privileged status also made us sitting ducks for soldiers squinting at us down their gunsights.

On the second day, lecturers from other colleges in Tehran occupied the Ministry of Science and Education. A Savak sharpshooter opened fire on them, killing one young lecturer. A crowd of hundreds of thousands gathered spontaneously to help carry his coffin from the hospital morgue for miles through the city, passing it from shoulder to shoulder to the university. The academic staff formed a single line along the front of the building with a eulogy written for the young martyr and all those murdered by the Shah. Just the other side of the square, we could see the crowd heading towards a large roundabout. Thousands of voices were chanting as one.

Then the roar of automatic fire ripped through the air. We stared with horror at the slaughter, frozen. A few people fainted. Suddenly the reality of the situation hit us and we bolted for cover. I ran, head down, as if all the hounds of hell were after me. From the echoes we believed we were being fired on – it later emerged the soldiers were on rooftops, firing down at the crowds – and we took refuge in the loft of the administration block. Between a hundred and two hundred people were killed, unarmed men and women, ambushed at Reza Shah Roundabout – later renamed, after the Shah’s fall, Revolution Roundabout.

The university occupation became a potent symbol of the resistance. Each day, the latest news, along with political pamphlets and press releases, was discussed and formed the basis of our developing strategy. There was a small but active minority of lecturers – around ten – who were left-wing, alongside about 20 hardline Islamists. Although none of them spoke of ‘Islamic universities’ at this time, under Khomeini many of them were actively involved in purging the universities of every last vestige of secularism. The others – the majority – were liberals and democrats.

Some of the liberals continued to insist that our occupation was not political and that we had nothing to do with what went on outside. They argued that our only aim should be the reopening of the university. The minister for education had their ear and he used his influence to ensure that the occupation remained ‘non-political’. As for me, I argued that we should hang banners from the balconies and windows. Given that there was strong anti-US sentiment and that the Shah’s government was created and sustained by the CIA, I 
proposed that we hang a banner reading ‘Down with US imperialism.’ It took no less than 20 days of relentless discussion to get this accepted.

Ayatollah Talaghani, the most prominent figure in the Islamic opposition movement in the country at the time, sought to link his movement with us. The Islamists managed to jump on his bandwagon with the help of professors such as Dr Mohammed Malaki. The good doctor later became the head of the university of Tehran as a reward for obeying instructions until he fell from favour and was jailed for a total of seven years. He was even forced to participate in one of the humiliating show trials staged by the Islamic revolution’s prosecutor Haji Lajiverdi.

Some of the other Islamicists were more fortunate. One of them – perhaps the quietest – became Minister of Agriculture. To this day, I honestly don’t believe he knew one end of a turnip from another! Some of his fellows are now in the Iranian equivalent of government. As these committed academics came to learn, the wages of sin are not eternal damnation, but parliament.

We published a daily occupation news report which was pasted on the university walls. Discussions would begin with our immediate proposals for the reorganisation of the institution, aimed at making it more democratic and responsive to the needs of its students. But as our cause spread and became a movement of the masses – millions throughout the country – we were driven to consider a much wider and more fundamental problem: the total restructuring of Iran. It now seemed obvious that shoras composed of students, workers and lecturers should run the university. Some of us went further and believed that shoras should run the entire country. It sounded unrealistic to some, but this was no academic pipe dream. In early 1979 more workers were mobilising and testing their strength and ability.

We organised the distribution of press releases about our activities and in support of the strikes and demonstrations. These
were relayed to the outside world by a network of student suppliers – a sort of pony express, but with motorbikes, though it was hard to find gas for the engines. Tehran was experiencing its coldest winter for years, and there was no fuel. The sight of a moving car became a rarity as petrol was nearly impossible to come by. With the streets almost devoid of traffic, sometimes the only sound you could hear throughout the sprawling city was the familiar crack of gunfire.

In total about 80 of us participated in the occupation. We took turns keeping guard, watching for signs of another attack by the riot squad. As our actions had become a focal point for the demonstrations which were now taking place all around the city, there were now rumours that the authorities wanted one of us shot dead to disperse the demonstrators.

Looking out of windows of the administration block over the main fifth floor balcony and across the square, we could see police barricades stretching 150 metres in all directions. At night, it was as quiet as a cemetery. We were all on edge, fearing a stealth attack by the Shah’s crack troops. Sunrise could not come soon enough, when we would be greeted by the faces of family members, smiling and waving from the far side of the barricades. Later in the day demonstrators would arrive to show their support.

As the days became weeks, the crowd of demonstrators grew larger. Before long we found ourselves watching in amazement at the seemingly endless sea of people that would flood the barricades, waving banners and even trying to break through and join us. And, all too often, we would watch in horror as their efforts were met with gunfire. It was nothing short of murder.

On the 25th and final day of the occupation, after the regime conceded the demand to reopen the university, we marched at the head of a mass demonstration to celebrate our victory. We had issued a call for everyone to come with us to reopen the university. Shops and workplaces closed as around half a million
people converged on the campus. A platform was erected in the university square and reporters from all political trends that had supported the occupation were invited to speak. Those of us that had been involved in the occupation were distinguished by armbands.

Because I could speak English I was the spokesperson for the world’s press. One reporter from an American television network asked, ‘What happens next?’, and I remember telling him, ‘When Khomeini arrives from Paris the masses will take over. The people will run the country in a democratic and just manner.’ Unfortunately, like so many others, I misjudged Khomeini’s intent, taking at face value his statement that he wanted no more to do with politics, but only to return to the holy city of Qum to take up his religious duties.

The journalist pressed me further: ‘How will the people exercise this power?’

‘Possibly through the shoras,’ I said. I don’t believe that, at the time, any of us had any more than a vague idea of the possibilities we were presented with… or of the dangers that we were walking towards.

With the reopening of the university and the fall of the Shah, we experienced a real sense of optimism as the snows in Tehran thawed and the winter passed. It was a period that was widely known as ‘the spring of freedom’. The university came alive with a sort of joyous chaos. Its corridors teemed with all manner of people, eager to learn and teach. Everyone seemed to carry a book in their hand, if not a pile cradled in their arms and held in place by their chins. These books – untitled, plain, white – were budget editions of previously banned titles by authors including Marx, Engels and Lenin. They sold in huge numbers now they were freely available.

Every inch of available space at the university was used. You could find a corridor blocked by a crowd of oil refinery workers
clustered round a young Fedaii, explaining the workings of the AK47 rifle he held in his hands. In another corner of the building, a group of Islamic students would be praying. Outside on the grass forecourt, there would be a lecture and discussion of what agricultural policy we should now adopt. It was an extraordinary and exciting time.

Revolutionary poet and dramatist Said Sultanpour led an ad hoc poetry circle which was highly political. He had just been released from prison and organised an agitprop street theatre group on the lawn. Dotted all around were speakers from different parties, each with a crowd of people around them, listening, murmuring their approval or heckling.

The arts faculty became a gallery of liberated arts. Artists commandeered corridors, lecture rooms, even broom cupboards. Walls were covered with paintings that had been previously banned. It was as if the university had been turned into an art gallery. All Iranian cultural life was here. And people flocked to it. Workers and peasants who had been denied access to this kind of creative expression in the past came to look, feel and understand art.

Every shade of opinion that had overthrown the Shah, from Islamists to communists, was represented in the university and on the shoras that ran it. This paralleled developments within Iran, as workers seized the factories and peasants the land, running the country democratically through their respective shoras.

Parts of the university were occupied by main political parties. The engineering faculty became the Fedayeen headquarters. The place thrummed with energy, young people came and went, armed with Kalashnikovs or carrying bundles of newspapers. It was to the Iranian revolution what the Smolny Institute in Saint Petersburg had been to the Soviets. These headquarters were still used as lecture theatres, however. Passing through one day, I happened upon a lecture by Houma Nategh, a professor at the department of Persian literature and a noted activist herself.
More than 500 people sat in rapt attention while she spoke about the contribution of women to the armed struggle.