Iran: Violent crackdown will not silence pro-Palestine protesters in US

Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations office in Geneva has categorically censured the ongoing crackdown on pro-Palestine demonstrations across US universities, stressing that violence against peaceful protesters will not silence them.

With Israel’s US-backed genocidal war on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip having passed the 200th-day mark, major American universities have been the scene of clashes between students and police officers amid intensifying protests in condemnation of the regime’s war on the besieged territory.

More than 20 universities in the US are protesting against the war, where upwards of 34,000 people have since October last year been killed, including women and children.

The students are calling for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are advancing the occupying regime’s war on Gaza.

Police have arrested hundreds of protesters across university campuses.

“We strongly condemn the brutal and violent crackdown on widespread peaceful pro-Palestinian protests at universities in the United States. The US Police brutality and excessive use of force during peaceful assemblies, and targeting students advocating for an end to genocidal war in Gaza is a matter of serious concern,” Iran’s permanent mission in Geneva said in a post on its X social media account on Saturday.

“Demonstrators are precisely calling for ending the US complicity in ongoing Genocide in Gaza in their name. Firing and beating peaceful protesters does not silence them, who are the frontline human rights defenders, it only reaffirms the urgency of the struggle for justice for Palestine,” the mission added.

“Police attacks against university students and professors, the scale of arrests and the conditions of detentions is deeply disturbing and we call for the release of all detained.”

The United States has been providing Israel with unrestrained military, intelligence and financial support since October 7, when the regime unleashed the war against the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Washington gives Israel $3.8bn in military assistance every year, and US President Joe Biden has continued to provide staunch support to the illegal entity amid the Gaza war. On Wednesday, Biden signed into law a massive funding package that will provide an additional $17bn to the occupying regime.

Washington has also vetoed several United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the brutal military aggression.

Last week, a group of United Nations experts said 80 percent of schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the war began in early October. Nearly 5,500 students have been killed, alongside 261 teachers and 95 university professors.

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