Though Twitter updates from the protests and rallies in Iran are varied, and can not be substantiated, one disturbing consistency amongst them is that Iranian students are being singled out in the government’s crackdown on supporters of Mir Hossein Moussavi.

According to Twitter updates, a number of attacks on Iranian students have been reported. Furthermore, a Web site has written, in great and unflinching detail, about the torture students have faced if they’ve been caught.

The site reports that a “group of around 46 [students] with a minibus were taken to the basement of the interior ministry [and] blindfolded” where they were subjected to “awful mental torture.”

According to the site, “One student was injured in the eye...[and] said his eyes were hurting badly” and that the student was losing his eyesight. Reportedly,"[he] then received a kick to his face. “

A male student was allegedly shot and killed by police during a protest in the Isfahan Student Dorm two days ago. A video of him bleeding to death on the ground has been circulating on Internet video sharing sites like YouTube.

Additionally, another tweet reported that a female student was assaulted by the government militia and died of her injuries Wednesday night at the Emam Razi Hospital.

A sit in demonstration at the Iran University was reported by a Twitter account to have been attacked by pro-government supporters. Several students were injured in the attack, and the school was heavily vandalized.

Another Twitter user has said that universities are reportedly being given lists of student protesters by the government.

What these lists are to be used for is unknown. However, it is suspected that the government is trying use university officials to help them crackdown on the estimated hundreds of thousands of Iranian youth who have been protesting the allegedly fraudulent reelection of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

There has been no word whether or not college professors are cooperating with the government in this matter, and there has been no other Twitter accounts which back up these claims.

Though a total death toll thus far from clashes between Moussavi supporters and the government have yet to be confirmed, some Twitter users are saying that Moussavi’s camp claim that 100 demonstrators have been killed across the country.

Few of these reports can be verified because the foreign press has been banned by the Iranian government from operating in the country. The government has also imposed a country wide blockade on all forms of cyber communication, but tech-savvy Iranians have managed to circumvent it anyway using proxy servers set up in other countries.

The government has also been accused of blocking text-messaging, websites and spreading misinformation in the opposition camp community websites.

Twitter has become the most popular medium for Iranians wishing to voice their opinion to the rest of the Internet.

According to Mashable, at one point, there were 221,744 tweets about Iran being made at a peak hour. Twitter has become such an important communication tool for anti-government protesters that the United States government asked Twitter to reschedule their routine maintenance to allow Iranians to continue sending out updates from the country.

However, while the popularity of Twitter updates about Iran has captured the world’s attention, it has also attracted a number of “spammers” who have been uploading false information, and then adding links that lead to advertisements or shock pornography.

But one reliable tweeter has stated that, while many students have reportedly died, authorities have yet to mention student deaths on Iranian television as of Thursday.

Watch video of wounded students below (warning: contains graphic footage. Discretion is advised)

Our Take

You really have to take everything that comes out of Twitter with a grain of salt. Especially because it seems like half the links on Twitter send you to advertisements for Viagra. Still, I’m certain a lot of the tweets could very well be true. Which is both good and bad. Good that the people of Iran are being able to voice their true opinions, and bad that people are having to die because of one man’s stupidity.

C’mon, Ahmadinejad. If you’re going to go through the hassle of rigging an election, you might as well make it look convincing.

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