On Friday June 12, Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of the Iranian presidential election. Immediately after, all other candidates, Moussavi, Karroubi, and even the conservative Rezaei, disputed the official results. So did some people who started several demonstrations to express their anger. More news fueled the suspicion of fraud at an unprecendented scale. On Monday June 15, and to the amazement of the world, millions of people – of all ages, classes, and backgrounds – were in the streets of Tehran demanding another election in what was the biggest demonstration since the revolution in 1979. A week later, despite the threats and beatings issued and ordered by the government, millions of people are still demonstrating, and the movement is growing and spreading to other cities.

Observers might find the situation confusing, since Iran has long been an isolated country and the everyday Iranian is unknown to the outside world. One cannot even prove that there was a fraud. There remains the fact that millions of people are protesting in the streets of Iran. These are traditional, religious, modern, young, old, rich and poor, academics – some of them our colleagues – going out in the streets and risking their lives with a form of innocence in their aims and tactics. Some of them may stand on their roofs at night shouting “God is great” to keep the movement alive. They are braving the power because they insist that the Islamic republic is a republic.

The government is imposing a ban on the foreign press, shutting down all means of communication within their reach, arresting hundreds of prominent activists, politicians and religious figures opposing the results, and terrorising demonstrators. Every day fewer videos and reports escape from Iran. The state media is depicting the protests as incited by the West, accusing the movement of being a party of hooligans and traitors. After a week of uncertainty, the head of the state, Khamenei, issued strong and explicit threats against participants in the protests and rallies.

This text is an urgent request to academics to fight the misrepresentation of this movement. This is not only about showing support to the courage and determination of people on the streets of Iran. It also means reaching for the many people in Iran who would like to participate but are frightened or know of the movement only through the state media. It means informing these people of the scale and nature of the movement, and thus widen its support within Iran. To all academics, please sign this appeal to support this movement in its call for a new election and oppose any violent intervention on protesters.

Dr. S. Aaronson (MIT) – Prof. S. Abramsky (University of Oxford) – Prof. L. Aceto (Reykjavik University) – Prof. J. Afary (University of California Santa Barbara) – Dr. E. Ahrèn (Uppsala University) – Dr. S. Akhavan (University of Skövde) – Dr. M. Alai (Universita di Urbino Carlo Bo) – Dr. G. Alfano (Brunel University) – Dr. R. Alléaume (Télécom Paris Tech) – Dr. S. A. Alyahya (Yale University) – Prof. E. Amaldi (Politecnico di Milano) – Prof. A. A. Amini (University of Louisville) – Dr. J. Anders (University College London) – Dr. E. Andersson (Heriot-Watt University) – Prof. K. Andrews (York University) – Dr. G. De Angelis (Universidade Nova) – Prof. W. Arendt (University of Ulm) – Dr. P. Arrighi (Université de Grenoble) – Prof. L. Badalucco (Universit di Palermo) – Dr. S. van Bakel (Imperial College London) – Dr. N. Baldanzini (Università degli Studi di Firenze) – Dr. A. Baltag (University of Oxford) – Dr. K. Banaszek (Nicolaus Copernicus University) – Dr. E. 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