Today, the safety of those students who displayed their anti-government protests at ‎Tehran University on Monday while President Mahmoud Ahmadineajd was delivering ‎his speech is the most important issue that human rights activists should focus on.‎

The reality is that we must be concerned. We must be seriously concerned about each and ‎every student who at University of Tehran chanted slogans against the President. By the ‎standards of any modern society, these students did the most natural thing: they ‎questioned the policies of the person who leads the executive branch of their country and ‎expressed their opposition to these policies. The disconcerting aspect of all of this is that ‎the target of these protests was the person of ‘Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’. He and his ‎supporters are not of the type to easily disregard such protests.‎

Experience has proved that the principal and only politics of Ahmadinejad’s government ‎in confronting those opponents who cross its self-defined “red lines _ on top of which is ‎staging protesting gatherings _ is only one issue: brutal suppression of the protestors in a ‎manner that will serve as a lesson to others. And in the words of a theoretician belonging ‎to the administration, ‘If group protestors experience a single unpunished protest, they ‎will be emboldened for the next’.‎

The manner in which Ahmadinejad’s administration has dealt with protesting gatherings ‎of teachers, workers, students _and most prominently protests by students from ‎Polytechnic University against the president in December 2006 _ are important events ‎that demonstrate the government’s approach to protestors. We have not forgotten that ‎when Polytechnic University students chanted “death to the dictator” in the presence of ‎Ahmadinejad, they were avenged with brutality and deception.‎

We have not forgotten the day when the president announced to the domestic and foreign ‎media that nobody had the right to confront the protesting students, and only a few ‎months later the protestors were punished and imprisoned on the flimsiest charges ‎‎(particularly accusing the students of insulting religious principles in student ‎publications, which have been repeatedly denied by students). It has also not been ‎forgotten that the tortures that some of the imprisoned students received in prison were ‎unprecedented. These students have been recently accused by the courts of “insulting the ‎President”, among their charges, while Mr. Ahmadinejad who had once spoken against ‎government confrontation of the protesting students to the media (and some of the ‎international media vociferously disseminated the news) has till today not felt the need to ‎make a single response to the calls of the families of the tortured students.‎

The student protests at Tehran University on Monday were once again against this very ‎person. If we fall into the belief that the reticence of government authorities on the day ‎following the protests is indicative of a diminished desire on their part to brutally crack-‎down the protestors, or if we believe that the President’s recent conciliatory remarks in ‎the presence of American students is a sign of his hesitancy and those of his associates, ‎we shall be hard mistaken. ‎

Let me summarize: The protestors at Tehran University are under threat from ‎Ahmadinejad’s government. All human rights advocates must from this very moment ‎take these threats seriously and take every measure at their disposal to prevent revengeful ‎acts by the authorities. Under the circumstances, it is absolutely naïve to bank on the ‎possibility of the President’s moderation in dealing with his political opponents.‎