The Contemporary History of Iran - Part 15: “The 1999 Student Uprising”

“The 1999 Student Uprising” - Part 15 of the Roqe Media series, The Contemporary History of Iran. In July of 1999, after the state censure and closing of a reformist-oriented newspaper, Iranian students, beginning at the University of Tehran, rose up against the regime with a unity, ideological solidarity and size that had not been seen in any kind of protest since the 1979 revolution. The student uprising has been called, Iran’s Tiananmen Square. Veteran journalist and former BBC Persian bureau chief, Mohammad Manzarpour, who was present at the protests as a student and a reporter (and was subsequently jailed), joins Jian Ghomeshi from Washington DC, to speak to this pivotal moment in recent Iranian history, the context, the aftermath and the legacy, and how an immediate violent backlash by the state would rattle a nascent reform movement and reconfirm the unbounded use of repression by the leaders of the Islamic Republic.