Students protest against Iran's leaders

TEHRAN, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Thousands of Iranian students rallied at universities in Tehran and other cities Monday, shouting anti-government slogans and facing security forces.

Witnesses and opposition Web sites said security forces blocked the entrance to Tehran University while clashes erupted between protesters and Basij militia elsewhere, The New York Times reported.

Protests were conducted at universities throughout Iran, including Kerman, Mashhad, Isfahan and Hamdean, and in the streets of Shiraz.

The protests came on National Student Day, an official holiday commemorating the 1953 killings of three students by the shah of Iran.

Videos posted on YouTube, Twitter and opposition Web sites Monday showed large students gatherings in Tehran and Mashhad. The police, barred from the universities, amassed outside the schools and in public squares to head off the protests.

Reports later Monday indicated widespread use of tear gas, beatings and arrests, the Times said.

"This is the price for freedom," one young man in his mid-20s told the Los Angeles Times as he nursed an arm bruised by what he said was a police truncheon. "Our friends in jail are on hunger strike. I cannot help protesting. I simply have to do something."

State television and radio carried no news about the protests. The government-backed Fars news agency reported 2,000 pro-government activists took to the streets in the capital. Authorities ordered foreign news outlets not to cover the protests, the New York Times reported.

Worldwide protests are planned for Saturday, six months after the elections, "to honor the Iranian people's peaceful struggle for their human and civil rights," said United4Iran, a network of activists supporting human rights in Iran and organizer of the event.