Burning veils, women cutting their hair and images of Iranian religious leaders on fire or torn… The death of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after being detained by the morality police caused a wave of anti-establishment fever in Iran, a country where protests tend to evaporate quickly.
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The demonstrations began timidly on Saturday, September 17 after learning of Amini’s deathwho had been arrested for violating the strict dress code in the Islamic Republic.
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The young woman was arrested exactly on Tuesday, September 13 in Tehran, where she was visiting, by the so-called Morale Police -responsible for enforcing the code- and was taken to a police station to attend “an hour of re-education” for wearing the veil wrong and dressing “inappropriately”.
Amini died three days later in hospital, arriving in a coma after suffering a heart attack. The protesters claim that she was mistreated during the detention and possibly received a blow to the head, something that the authorities deny..
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Thus, what began as a small protest quickly turned into an escalation that spread like wildfire in more than 20 cities in the country and has been repressed by law enforcement.
New protests broke out this Saturday in Iran over the death of a young woman detained by the morality police, despite the bloody repression of the security forces that has left at least 41 dead, according to official figures.
However, the Iran Human Rights group put the death toll at 54, excluding security personnel, and said that in many cases authorities had made returning the bodies of the dead to their families conditional on them agreeing to secret burials. .
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The Oslo-based NGO said most of the deaths had occurred in the Caspian Sea provinces of Guilán and Mazandarán.
The NetBlocks web monitor reported that Skype is now restricted in the country, as part of the communications blackout that already affects other platforms and social networks such as Instagram, WhatsApp and LinkedIn.
Iran’s main reform party on Saturday called on the state to end the obligation for women to wear veils in public.
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A revolution?
The protests in the Persian country are not something new: in 2019, many Iranians took to the streets due to the increase in fuel prices, and in 2020 and 2021 the droughts also caused marches.
this 2022, retirees protested their pensions, while the rising cost of bread prompted many Iranians to defy the authorities again.
But all these protests were limited to the groups or social classes that started them and were deactivated after a few days.
However, the mobilizations for the death of Amini have gone further and have broken the fragmentation in Iran. They have even aroused international condemnation: Washington sanctioned several high-ranking Iranian officials and UN Women calls for a thorough investigation into what happened to the young woman. Also, in New York and Europe hundreds of protesters have taken to the streets to express their sympathy for the cause.
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“These are the largest demonstrations since November 2019. While the previous national movements were led by popular classes and were caused by the degradation of socioeconomic conditions, the outbreak this time is sociocultural and political,” Ali Fathollah-Nejad estimates in this regard. Iran expert at the University of Beirut.
For Azadeh Kian, professor of sociology at the University of Paris Cité and a specialist in Iran, “what is unprecedented in these demonstrations is that women are in the foreground.” “This time protests are heard not only against the general situation in the country but also for women’s rights. It is an important change”.
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“They are the victims, it is normal for them to protest. What is much more important is that men support them,” explains Alexandre Grinberg, an analyst at the Jerusalem Institute for Security and Strategy.
This time protests are heard not only against the general situation in the country but also for women’s rights. It’s a major change
That is why, according to Kian, this week women, especially in Iranian Kurdistan, “burned their veils as a protest against the ideological underpinnings of the Islamic regime,” even though the regime is unlikely to change its position on the veil. “Removing compulsory hijab would be a severe defeat (for the regime),” says journalist Afshin Molavi in his book The Soul of Iran: A Nation’s Struggle for Freedom.
In any case, Annabelle Sreberny, a professor at the Center for Iranian Studies at London’s Soas University, told The Guardian that these protests are a show of the strength of the women’s rights movement and could ultimately trigger a massive challenge to the regime in Iran.
“It could be the time when people motivated by all the issues Iran is facing today come together around these women’s issues to challenge the regime,” she told the British daily.
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Until now, neither the police repression, which is using riot gear; nor the promises of the president, Ebrahim Raisí, that Amini’s death will be investigated; nor the sending of emissaries from the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, to the family of the deceased seem sufficient to put an end to the protests that resound in the streets with slogans such as “Justice, freedom and no compulsory hijab or “Women, life and freedom”.
Militia bases attacked
Authorities have reported waves of arrests: Guilan’s police chief announced “the arrest of 739 rioters, including 60 women,” in that province alone.
Riot police deployed in large numbers in northern Tehran after darkwitnesses told AFP.
According to the Norway-based Kurdish rights NGO Hengaw, protesters “have taken control” of parts of the city of Oshnavieh, in West Azerbaijan province.
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The Iranian judiciary acknowledged that protesters had “attacked three Basij bases,” an Islamic militia working under state orders, in Oshnaviyeh, but denied that security forces had lost control of the city.
Iranian President, the ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi, affirmed that it was necessary to deal “decisively” with those who were behind the violence.
His comment came shortly after Amnesty International warned of the “risk of even greater bloodshed” facilitated by a “deliberate blackout of the internet” by the authorities, in an attempt to hinder the demonstrations and prevent images of repression reach abroad.
The London-based NGO said evidence gathered from 20 cities in
Iran point to “a horrific pattern of Iranian security forces deliberately and illegally firing live ammunition at protesters.”
Some footage from Friday showed security forces in the towns of Piranshahr, Mahabad and Urmia firing what appeared to be live ammunition at unarmed people.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING and AFP
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