IRAN: MARYAM RAJAVI'S MESSAGE ON THE NEW ACADEMIC YEAR 2016-2017
Dear students,
Honorable teachers and professors,
Champions of culture and knowledge,
Honorable
women and men who have risen to defend the truth in the face of the
injustices done by fundamentalism, ignorance, coercion and abuse of
religion, and whose hearts are filled with hope for Iran's freedom.
Hail to all of you.
I hope that in the new academic year, your
invaluable efforts to teach and educate would be ever more intertwined
with a determination for resistance and achievement of freedom.
On
the eve of the new academic year, the fundamentalist mullahs and their
ignorant and oppressive guards have imposed silence and fear over
society. This coldness, however, will be overcome by vigor and a spirit
of renewal and renovation as you begin the warmest and the most joyful,
collective endeavor hand in hand in every street and in every school and
university.
Let us commemorate the girls and boys who used to
study in your schools and universities, the pioneers who were always at
the forefront of every act of protest against the mullahs'
fundamentalist dictatorship.
Khomeini thought that he could
guarantee his regime's survival with the wave of executions in the 1980s
and the 1988 massacre. Ironically, in the beginning of the new school
year, we see that those pure souls have been provoking Iran's society in
a movement to obtain justice particularly after the release of Mr.
Montazeri's moving audio file. And again, we are hearing their voice and
message who say the first lesson in every class and in every school is
the lesson of freedom.
Children of Iran who make her future,
Dear teachers and professors,
The
new academic year begins as the crises and chaos prevailing the country
have become evident more than anywhere else in the country's
educational system.
They are manifested in schools in the form of a
growing disarray, in the drooping of youngsters and teenagers in
poverty, in deep-seated inequality, in the low level of education, in a
repressive and restrictive educational atmosphere, and in distressed
teachers. And in the universities, they are manifested in the form of a
scientific plunge, in a stagnated and barren educational environment,
and in deprived students and professors.
While 13 million Iranian
students are going to school this year, there are 4 million children
and youngsters between 6 and 14 years of age who are deprived of
education. Many of them are child laborers, some of whose parents are
addicted or are very poor. Some of them even do not have birth
certificates.
Shortage of teaching spaces is among the most
significant educational problems. Except for a limited number of
schools, lack of physical education and recreational facilities is the
common feature of all schools. In the girls' schools and schools that
are located in low-income regions, particularly in the provinces of
Sistan-o-Baluchistan, Hormuzgan, and West Azerbaijan, students are
crammed into tight spaces which are way too far from basic educational
and hygienic standards.
32,000 schools, that is one-third of the
total number of schools across the country, are timeworn and lack
immunity, and they must be razed and reconstructed.
In Tehran,
alone, some 17,000 classrooms are waiting their turns to be reinforced.
In light of the limited government budget, however, the regime's
officials estimate that it takes 32 years to complete the reconstruction
of schools in the capital. With the current budget, it will take half a
century to reconstruct all the schools across the country.
The
mullahs spend the country's wealth and revenues for the Revolutionary
Guards Corps and its warmongering and carnage in Syria and Iraq.
Instead, impoverished families who cannot earn their own living, are
made to pay part of the school's tuition.
Another significant
consequence of the prevailing repression is a closed intellectual and
political atmosphere, and a dictated approach to education, educational
methods and treatment of children.
Widespread depression, mental
problems and lack of joy and happiness are other consequences of the
regime's repression of society. In addition, starvation, mal-nutrition,
physical problems and lean figures of students bespeak of the drastic
impact of inequality, injustice, and economic and political pressures on
Iranian society where children bear the brunt of all harms and are the
most vulnerable.
Based on official estimates, one per cent of
the 13-million strong population of students are involved with drugs.
The rate of addicted students reaches 2.6 per cent. Therefore, according
to government estimates which are usually less than the actual figures,
there is more than 250,000 addicted students in high schools and
universities.
Indeed, what has happened to the Iranian society?
What kind of plague, what calamity, what destructive war has hit the
society that everything has lost its livelihood? The calamity is the
Velayat-e Faqih regime whose prolonged rule has been increasingly
destroying Iran's children and wealth.
Nevertheless, the ruling
regime never feels secure because of the younger generation, the arisen
teachers, and the schools each of which is a hotbed of rebellion and
protest. This is why the regime has implemented a plan to station one
mullah in each school. This year, more than 20,000 mullahs have been
deployed in schools all across the country to step up repression and
propagate fundamentalist absurdities under the banner of Islam.
Fortunately,
our fellow teachers staged admirable protests and strikes last academic
year. They challenged the regime's backward and repressive policies in
the Education Ministry and demanded their rights in every city; they
persisted on the release of imprisoned teachers, and demanded
recognition of the right to protest for the education staff and
elimination of inequalities among teachers. I hail them all and call on
our fellow students, pupils and all our compatriots to rise in support
and solidarity with the righteous demands of our honorable teachers and
education staff.
Iran's young and inventive generation,
Freedom-loving faculties of universities and education,
The
huge crisis entangling the educational system, has caused an abysmal
decline in the quality of universities and centers of higher education.
Despite a quantitative increase, a vast number of universities such as
the Azad universities have been built only to profit the ruling mullahs,
and have thus drastically undermined the quality of education in the
centers of higher education.
The budget for the higher education
is not enough and some universities are not able to pay the salaries of
their professors. This year, the budget for the country's most important
universities --including Tehran University, Sharif Industrial
University, University of Shiraz, University of Isfahan, University of
Tabriz, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Industrial University of
Isfahan, Amir-Kabir University, and the University of Science and
Industry—has been less than the budget for the seminary schools and
other so-called religious institutions.
Poverty of students,
decline in the content of university courses, and unemployment of
graduate students are other examples of the decadence of the system of
higher education. According to government sources, from a 40-million
inactive population, 5.5 million are university students who do not have
any jobs.
In fact, the educational system has reached a deadlock and
is falling apart. This is a loss that the Velayat-e Faqih regime is
neither able to get out of, nor its military and terrorist priorities
allow it to do so.
Iran's educational system needs a free
atmosphere to resume its livelihood and genuine progress. The first step
to rescue the country's system of education and higher education, is
the removal of the ruling mullahs and the overthrow of the Velayat-e
Faqih regime. As the Iranian Resistance leader Massoud Rajavi said, the
struggle to bring down the regime "has been and will continue to be the
central core of the nationalist and patriotic movement against (it)."
The courageous high school and university students who have risen up
since June 20, 1981, stood up to the ruling regime and sacrificed their
lives, pioneered such a struggle. University students made up a vast
part of the victims of the 1988 massacre who had risen up for the
glorious prospect of Iran's freedom and establishment of a democratic
society.
As I pointed out, the memory of those martyrs has
incited our society, today more than ever, in its campaign to seek
justice and put an end to executions: the executions of Reyhaneh's,
Neda's, Sattar's, and Behnoud's, to the executions carried out after the
uprisings on June 20th and September 27th, and the 30,000 red roses who
were hanged from the gallows in 1988.
The energy emanating from
the living legacy of those martyrs will echo the Iranian people's demand
for justice and cry of "no to executions and no to the terror of the
mullahs" in Iran and across the world. It will bring the mullahs to
justice, prosecute them for their human rights violations and fuel the
passion for Iran's freedom.
In the beginning of the academic
year, I call on all freedom-loving pupils, students, teachers and
professors to participate more actively in the movement to obtain
justice (for the victims of the 1988 massacre). You and your initiatives
deserve to be at the forefront of this movement because you are the
ones who hold the torch of knowledge and awareness. They include
innovative activities on the internet and social networks against
executions in Iran and seeking justice for the victims of the 1988
massacre, enlightening activities at your schools or universities,
writing slogans on the walls in the streets and alleys, disseminating
information about martyrs and prisoners, protest gatherings, and
disrupting the regime's shows of public execution, flogging and other
inhuman humiliations…
This is how the path can be paved to realize
the free Iran of tomorrow based on freedom, democracy, equality,
separation of religion and state, and establishment of an advanced
educational system.
An advanced educational system which is free
and obligatory for all children of Iran; a system of higher education
which is based on academic freedom; an all-embracing athletic system
which allows girls and boys to have free and equal activity in various
athletic fields in cities and villages.
An educational system where
all our compatriots, including the various ethnic nationalities can
preserve their cultural, religious and linguistic identities and can
speak, study and work in their own mother tongue and promote it.
An
educational system where all students, girls and boys, in high schools
and universities, from any nationality, with any opinion, and with any
social and financial status, can enjoy equal opportunities in the system
of education and higher education and employment.
An educational
system where teachers and professors can enjoy the opportunity to teach
and do research without any restrictions or limitations, and can gain
back their worthy social and political status.
An educational
system where youths and adolescents can learn the manners of a
democratic life particularly the value of gender equality, believe in
mutual respect, tolerance and restraint towards other religions and
opinions, make sacrifices for the interests of society, and become
empowered for political participation.
An educational system
where various fields of fine arts become part of education in high
schools and universities and lead to the blossoming and livelihood of
younger generations.
The energy and force for this great
revolution come from you, the conscious and freedom loving youths of
Iran. I call on you to participate in the struggle for a free and
democratic Iran.
