GVF — The Iranian government will cut funding to students studying abroad should they develop ties to the opposition Green Movement, the country’s Minister of Science, Research, and Technology said on Sunday.

Kamran Daneshjou told the semi-official Fars news agency that the government would act “without delay” to prevent “students with links to the Green Sedition” from receiving funding from the Iranian state.

“Sedition” is a term commonly used by Iranian officials to refer to the protest movement that erupted following a massive fraud in Iran’s 2009 presidential race.

Daneshjou said the move was part of “measures taken by the ministry against students on state-scholarships who use public funds to act against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Students have been a vital element in the pro-democracy Green Movement in Iran. In a statement issued in November 2010, opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi called the country’s three million students “the Green Movement’s biggest asset”

Mousavi and fellow Green Movement leader Mahdi Karroubi were placed under a form of house arrest by the regime in mid-February 2011 in response to their calls for protest in solidarity with pro-democracy activists in the Arab World.

Source : The Green Voice of Freedom