Global Voices Online

Earlier this month, students at Zanjan University in North-West Iran recorded and uploaded a video of their school's vice president, Hassan Madadi, with his shirt unbuttoned, allegedly preparing to have sex with a female student. Several Iranian websites and blogs say the female student had alerted her university's Islamic Student Association that she was under pressure by the vice president to have sex with him.

Students at other Iranian universities including Kirmanshah University have previously made allegations of sexual harassment from officials, without consequences. In this case, the evidence of citizen media was clear: students protested for one week, before the vice president was finally suspended. The President of the University apologized and thanked students.

Here is the video showing a very confused university vice president listening to the orders of the students who filmed him. This film has been watched more than 67,000 times in less than 10 days.

Iranian blogger, Asmoun Abi writes [fa]:

I am living in a country where the only thing I get is a veil. I am living in a country where you look at me as somebody to sleep with. I am living in a country where in its most secure and cultured place, a woman gets violated.

The blog, Zanjan1387 was launched by students in Zanjan University to keep readers updated about their protest movement. In this blog we read [fa] that more than 1500 students signed a petition asking the Minister of Science to fire the President of Zanjan University. The blog has also published several photos and videos from different protests.

Sano claims [fa] that the vice president put pressure on this girl to have sex with him and wanted a 7 month “temporary marriage”. The blogger adds that before this incident there were other cases too.

Tourjan says [fa] that the interesting point is that Madadi, the vice president who has acted in a very immoral way, a few weeks ago told the Association of Islamic Students that they would be shut down for doing immoral things!