They don’t wear a uniform or badge. They dress in civilian clothes and, as numerous videos and images on social networks reflect, they break into the demonstrations that have shaken Iran since mid-September on motorcycles or on foot, armed with sticks, batons and riot gear. Also with weapons loaded with live ammunition. These men dressed in ordinary dark clothes have been the executioners of a part of the at least 304 Iranians who, according to the organization Iran Human Rights, have perished in the repression of the protests, according to numerous testimonies and organizations such as Amnesty International (AI). Many Iranians think they know who they are: the members of the Basij paramilitary force, one of the five branches of the Revolutionary Guards, that parallel army that was born from Ayatollah Ruholá Khomeini’s fear of a coup by the regular Army. The official name of that militia is the Basij Resistance Force. Before, after its creation in 1980, it was called the “Organization for the Mobilization of the Oppressed”: the poor of the country whom Khomeini promised would inherit the Islamic Republic. A good part of the basijies are of humble social extraction.
This militia, “frequently used as an auxiliary force to maintain public order and repress dissent,” denounces AI, “has been linked on numerous occasions to the murder of unarmed protesters,” according to the United States Department of the Treasury, which It considers it the “arm of national repression” of the Iranian regime and in 2007 it included it in its list of terrorist entities.
The participation of these militiamen in the repression of the demonstrations for the death on September 16 of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, arrested for wearing the veil incorrectly, was very early, he explains by telephone to EL PAÍS from Chattanooga (United States). ), Saeid Golkar, a professor at the University of Tennessee and author of a book on this militia. “The first to arrive was the police, but three days later, when the protest had already spread throughout the country, the Basijis were already present.” Golkar confirms that the militants are not only “working as active oppressors in the street, killing and arresting people”, but also infiltrating the protesters. “The plainclothes officers have two tasks: the first is to identify the leaders. Some of these people have since been arrested or killed, such as the 16-year-old teenager Nika Shakarami. [muerta a golpes el 20 de septiembre]”, explains the specialist. “Your second job for him is to create an atmosphere of fear. Since they are not wearing a uniform, the protesters do not know if the person next to them is one of these militiamen.”
For the Franco-Iranian sociologist Mahnaz Shirali, these militiamen not only “sow terror” but, by dressing in civilian clothes, provide the regime with the possibility of “erasing their trail”. “When the police arrest someone in your family, you know who has arrested them. The Basijids kidnap young protesters and put them in secret detention centers. Social media is full of ads from families looking for their children.”
Of the important presence of these militiamen in the repression of some protests, whose participants, on many occasions, have defended themselves from the security forces, one fact attests: of the 43 members of the Iranian security forces who have died since the September 17, allegedly in clashes with protesters, 24 —56%— were Basijis, according to public data from their funerals collected in a tweet by Iranian political scientist Ali Alfoneh.
In mid-October, 15 days after security forces killed 66 protesters, including several children, on what is now known as “Black Friday” in Zahedan, in the southeastern province of Sistan and Balochistan, on September 30 , the state newspaper Iran News published a list in which he raised to 24 the deaths of members of the security forces who participated in the repression during the previous four weeks. 17 are presented as Basijis. One of these militiamen, Mohammad Amin Aref, died on Zahedan’s “black Friday”, the newspaper confirms. The death of other basijis on that list is also located in that locality. On October 15, the official IRNA agency assured that, in a single night, 185 militiamen had been injured when participating in the security device that tried to crush the protests in Tehran.
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a tentacular structure
The Basijis are not only a militia “very important in terms of repression”, Golkar underlines, “it is also a mass organization”, which admits men and women, organized in 22 entities present throughout the country, among them, associations of students, professors, lawyers, journalists and athletes, or the so-called “rectitude circles” where the affiliates —which Golkar calculates at a million— are indoctrinated in the most reactionary Islamic values, often in the same mosques. The specialist calculates that the basijies have about 50,000 offices. Members of the organization are present even at the highest levels of the Administration: the ultra-conservative former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [2005-2013] he was a basiji. The militia also maintains a parallel economic empire with million-dollar stakes in Iran’s main industries, such as metals and minerals, automobiles and banking.
“They are everywhere,” explains Parisa, the fictitious name of an Iranian exile in Spain, who recalls another of the militiamen’s tasks: supporting the morality police, the body to which the death of Mahsa Amini is attributed. “For us Basijis and the morality police it is the same thing. They also stop people for nothing, put you in a van and beat you up.” As the morality police, the Basijites see the headscarf as a bulwark against lust and the Westernization of Iran.
Parisa was threatened with jail by a Basiji after overhearing a private conversation criticizing the regime. Nazanin, another exiled Iranian, also with a fictitious name, was fired from her job as a professor at Shiraz University after a Basiji student denounced her for criticizing the closure of independent newspapers in class. “To teach at the university, you have to join the Basijis, but only if you are an active member do you get a place,” she stresses. 40% of places in Iranian universities are reserved for students of the organization. One in three university students in the country is a member of its ranks, according to data from Professor Golkar.
The privileges of being Basiji do not stop there. Only active members receive a salary from the State, but all affiliates have preferential access to scholarships, public employment and housing, and have a medical service and a network of stores. The organization has thus become, says Golkar, “a cushion between the clerical regime and the people” and constitutes “one of the reasons for the survival” of the Islamic Republic. Its raison d’être is “to recruit people from society and then try to indoctrinate, organize, arm and use them against that same society,” the expert concludes. These armed basijis, who receive military training and anti-riot techniques, are then integrated into the units in charge of crushing the protests. The current Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recently defined this militia as “a resplendent tree.”
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