Readers who watched the slice of the Iranian past in our previous post will be interested in this slice of the Iranian present.

According to an official Iranian radio report picked up by BBC Monitoring - unfortunately, available only to subscribers or those with access to Nexis - there is an exhibition of Israeli merchandise currently on display at Amir Kabir University in Tehran. Students are not, of course, being encouraged to purchase said merchandise. The purpose of the exhibition, apparently, is to “accustom the youth and the other strata of the society with the companies related in different ways to the Zionist regime or those that Zionists have invested in.” And just in case the Amir Kabir students don’t get the point, they can view a collection of photographs “showing the Zionist regime crimes in occupied Palestine” helpfully placed alongside.

However, it would seem that Amir Kabir students are concerned with matters of more immediate relevance. According to the AKI Agency, their own website carries details about a young journalist and student from the Baluchi minority, Yaghoub Mehrnahad, who has been sentenced to death by the Islamist regime. His trial is reported to have taken place “behind closed doors”. Neither his lawyer nor his family were present.

This isn’t the first time that Amir Kabir students have confronted the regime. Yesterday, they reported that Ramin Fattahi, a Sufi religious leader, had died in Evin prison as a result of kidney problems which were left untreated. And last month, three of their number were released from several months in prison after being found innocent of trumped-up charges which included “insulting Islam.”

The Center for the Defenders of Human Rights, led by activist Shirin Ebadi, issued a statement declaring that the “… widespread arrest of those with left-wing tendencies and Kurdish students indicates that freedom of speech and the opinions of alternative thinkers are being trampled upon.”

No doubt, the Israeli merchandise exhibition is a grand consolation.

UPDATE: Labour Start reports on plans for a global day of action in solidarity with jailed Iranian trade unionists Mansour Osanloo and Mahmoud Salehi.