On the same day that the Islamic Republic paraded through the streets of Iran, burning idols emblazoned with the Israeli and American flags, an educational union published a list of 200 students' names who have been murdered by the regime during the protests.
The Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations said it had published the list on Wednesday despite efforts to hide the truth, releasing the names of students - some as young as 14 and 15 - who were indiscriminately shot by regime security forces.
In a way, it severs the final thread hanging between the Islamic Republic and the students.
Students, a group that played an outsized role in collapsing the monarchy in 1979 and bringing the Islamic Republic to power in Iran.
That origin story has always been one of the regime’s claims to legitimacy - that of youth in the streets, righteous anger, and the promise of a new Iran. But the Islamic Republic regime doesn't get to inherit the symbolism of students while treating the same group as disposable.
'My schoolmate'
On a day when the regime put on an embarrassing sham of legitimacy, the names of students were shared with the world at great risk - students who were killed in cold blood.
“Yare Dabestani Man” (“My schoolmate”) is a song long associated with the student movement. It became a song of solidarity that emerged during the 1979 revolution, which brought the Islamic Republic to power, and later became inseparable from the bloody student uprisings of 1999, resurfacing again whenever Iranians returned to the streets.
Yare Dabestani Man no more. A republic that massacres its students and does not blink has forfeited its legitimacy.