Memories of Fereydon Alam, Former Secretary of World Confederation

Translated by: Atiyeh As'ad

With best regards to the participants of today's commemoration ceremony, I would like to summarize two memories associated with mutual global solidarity at two different periods of student movement history abroad.

The first memory:

The first memory took place at the organizational flourish era of World Confederation and another one happened at early periods of abroad student movement.
In the summer of 1967 that I had the honor of being Confederate Secretary, Mohammad Reza Shah received a formal invitation from President of Germany and travelled to Germany. Board of Directors of that period consisting Rahmat Khosravi, Changiz Pahlavan, Hasan Masali, Bahman Niroumand and myself in a team work did the protest preparations in Germany. However the main reason and trigger for mobilizing the students to participate in the protest was done by the government of two years ago by arresting a number of former activists of British Federation known as "Nikkhah Group" because of a false accusation of participating in the Shah's assassination. These federation activists had returned Iran after the completion of their studies. They had been arrested and severely tortured to confess to the uncommitted crimes after the unsuccessful assassination of the Shah. In their indictment, their execution and long imprisonment was asked. The news and reports of the lawyers that was sent to Iran and their brave defense at the military trials severely hurt Iranian youth living abroad.
We began to act against the tyrannies and the main activity was hunger strike of students in Karlsruhe. And finally we were able to stop their execution.
We ourselves also learnt a lot in this fight. For example our friend Jamshid Anvar who was a student in Britain at that time and the risk of death threatened his old friends, could launch "Payman" Journal with a typewriter and with working days and nights and also could set the ground for defending political prisoners. As the king came to Germany, the students got the opportunity to protest against the torture and imprisonment of political activist.
So the protests were held splendidly and as the embassy could not gather even some people, who receive scholarships for welcoming, brought a group of mob and scoundrels from Iran to Germany by plane. And since they could do nothing but insults and beating and fighting, they kicked and beat the students in front of German TV cameras. The videos were broadcasted many times again and again on TV in Germany and this helped us a lot because we could not explain about our protests to German people better than this. After more than six years of our actions, two of the Ministers, Changiz Pahlavan and me received citations with imperious mood from Karlsruhe Court on 21st of December of 1967 (two days to the beginning of Christmas holidays and New Year Eve). In the citations we were called to court as defendants based on article 103 of Penal Code and they threatened that if we won't be present there they will send us to court. We called Dr. Heldman, the lawyer of the Confederation, immediately and discussed the case with him. Dr. Heldman explicitly explained us that it was a very serious matter since according to this article of Penal Code insulting the leaders of most favored nations of Germany is a crime. On this basis, the complainant is not the Embassy of Iran that could be accused of incompetency but is German government that is its people's selection. This is the exact text of the law that includes three to five years of prison and deprivation of academic title. We should be satisfied with the least penalty. We immediately called our friends Bahman Niromand, Mahmoud Rafi at Berlin, Shoja Sadri, Farhad Samnar, and Mahmoud Rasekh at Frankfurt and discussed the issue with them.
Friends immediately got to work and indicted against themselves in writing according to article 103 of the law by mobilizing thousands of people in a short time in the two big cities that the left side were the majority in the Student Organization. In other words 15 thousand people at Berlin and tens of thousands of people in Frankfurt participated in this action.
Following the display of this solidarity, German Government was forced to withdraw his complaint since according to Dr. Heldman if they tried us they also would be forced to follow the rest of the cases.
It's good to mention that Benno Ohnesorg, German Student, had a major role in Berlin protests and so-called movie of Shah's fans and mobilizing students.
The second memory:
The second memory is from Student Organization of Munich which has happened during early period of student movement abroad. While there was not any trace of protests against murderer and torture of liberal sympathizers in another countries, student organization in Germany was the pioneer of world solidarity. Once, in addition to participation of Iranian students at protests against the murderer of Patrice Lumumba, a black guy also participated. The famous Police Chief of Munich, Mr. Schneider, called the head of the protesters and asked him: "I know you and all the Iranian by name now tell me what this black man is doing here among you?" As he was a talented and punctilious eloquent speaker replied: “He is also a newcomer Iranian that we have polished him in black so that you cannot recognize him.”

Have a nice time.

Cited in: Page 30, 16th of Azar Issue, in remembrance of 50th anniversary of founding World Confederation of Iranian Students

Prepared by the organizing committee of 50th anniversary of founding World Confederation of Iranian Students (National Union) 7th January 2013