This is a guest post by Potkin Azarmehr
Last year the SOAS Administration claimed they were unknowingly duped by the Islamic Republic embassy in London, who used the university facilities as a platform for their propaganda and disinformation, by holding a “symposium” as a pretext for an official celebration of the Islamic Revolution in a British university.
Well if you could give the SOAS Administration the benefit of the doubt last year, a repeat of the same “symposium” makes it impossible and cretinous to do so this year. For once again, an invitation by the Cultural Centre of the Embassy of the I.R. of Iran, accompanied by a poster with the heading “In Praise of the 29th Anniversary of the Victory of the Islamic Revolution”, has been sent out to embassy staff and associates for a 3 day event, 6-8th February at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, with the usual reception starting at 6:30 pm.
At a time when only recently, 43 Iranian students, across Iranian universities, have either been arrested or abducted by the Islamic Republic agents, it is a travesty of common decency and human values for the SOAS university to allow this cultural facade by the Islamic Republic to be held in a British university.
I shall be ringing SOAS on Monday to make sure they are aware that the Islamic Republic embassy is behind this “symposium”. If so, I believe the (ab)use of university facilities for a foreign embassy’s propaganda activities is in fact illegal as I was told by the SOAS administration last year.
The event will be attended by three turncoat Iranian actors who have continously served and praised the Islamic Republic, but in no way do they represent the decent mainstream Iranian artists who only recently, during the Fajr film festival, protested at even more increasing government control and censorship by Ahmadi-Nejad’s government.
For further information to enquire as to why a British university is allowing its facilities to be used by representatives of a religious dictatorship that has for three decades repressed students, academics and artists in Iran, refer to the following:
SOAS Principal Paul Webley:
email: pw2@soas.ac.uk
Tel 0207 898 4014
Fax 0207 898 4019
SOAS Conference Office:
020 7898 4918
