IRAN: Oxford condemned for honouring slain protester

Iran has protested to an Oxford University college over a scholarship in memory of the slain Iranian student who became an icon of mass street protests sparked by the disputed June election, writes Ali Akbar Dareini for Associated Press. In Tehran, a small group of hard-line women demonstrated on Wednesday against the scholarship in front of the British Embassy. The women chanted "Death to Britain", the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Oxford's Queen's College established the Neda Agha Soltan Graduate Scholarship in Philosophy earlier this year, named for the 27-year-old student fatally shot on 20 June on the sidelines of a Tehran demonstration. Her dying moments were caught on a video viewed by millions on the Internet, and she became a potent symbol of the opposition's struggle.

"It seems that the University of Oxford has stepped up involvement in a politically motivated campaign which is not only in sharp contrast with academic objectives" but also linked to British interference in Iran's post-election turmoil, Iran's Embassy in London said in a letter to the provost of Queen's College.
Full report on the Associated Press site