Iranians Clash At Protester Funeral
The New York Times reports:
Two days after the largest antigovernment protest in Iran in more than a year, supporters and opponents of the authorities fought Wednesday in a battle for the memory of a slain protester, state media and an opposition Web site reported.
The clashes erupted at Tehran University during the funeral of Saane Zhaleh, one of two students reported killed during protests on Monday.
Images on the Web site of the state broadcaster IRIB showed a throng of people surrounding a coffin, wrapped in the green, white and red Iranian flag, as it was carried above the heads of the crowd. But the opposition Kaleme Web site said the university’s arts campus had been taken over by pro-government forces who beat and arrested anti-government students.
The contest to claim Mr. Zhaleh as a martyr reflected divisions that seemed to have emerged once more into the open following the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
The authorities said Mr. Zhaleh, a Kurdish student, was a Basij, one of the student vigilantes on many campuses, who was shot by a government opponent. Opposition accounts said plainclothes security officers roaming the streets beat him to death and claimed that he had joined the antigovernment protest.
With the fighting on Wednesday both sides seemed to be seeking to claim him as one of their own.
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