History has shown that the street protests, when massive and sustained, they can force governments to change their policies. It happened in Spain with the 15-M movement, whose demonstrations against the economic situation and corruption, which began on May 15, 2011, cornered the government. Also in Greece, in 2010 and 2011, when tens of thousands took to the streets to decline the policies austerity after the global financial crisis.
(Also read: After almost three months of protests, Iran decides to abolish the morality police).
It happened in Ukraine, in 2013, when the demonstrations of the ‘Euromaidan’ tilted the country in favor of Europe and political freedoms, and against the pro-Russian line of the president Victor Yanukovych. And in France, with the ‘yellow vests’ of 2018 that put the president in check Emmanuel Macron. And in Chile in 2019, when weeks of marches led to the government of sebastian pinera to agree on a constituent assembly to change the political charter of the times of the dictatorship. And it happened in Colombia, in 2021, when the protests stopped a tax reform.
In all these cases it is movements called against governments elected by popular vote and that, to a greater or lesser degree, guarantee the right to protest and the exercise of opposition, and in general respect the freedom of expression.
Novelty is what happens in China and in Iran, regimes where those rights and freedoms are severely restricted. Although these are very different processes, both cases are similar in that, unable to contain the protest their authoritarian governments have had to give in, at least in part, to the demands of the protesters. And this in a matter of weeks, as in Iran, or just a few days, as in China.
(Of interest: China relaxes anti-covid measures after a wave of protests: these are the changes).
against the ropes
On Thursday, November 24, just as the echoes of the Communist Party Congress were fading, in which Xi Jinping -the top leader of the party and of China- consolidated his enormous power, a fire in a multi-family house in urumquithe capital of Xinjiang province in the far northwest, changed the political dynamics.
Ten people died and another nine were injured. Firefighters and paramedics took a long time to arrive due to the strict confinement that had been in the city for more than 100 days. Videos recorded by neighbors and viralized on social networks showed the problems that emergency teams faced to access the place.
Walls of red plastic briefcases, armed security agents and many medical personnel taking tests have locked Chinese cities for weeks, even months, inside the ‘Zero covid’ policy championed by leader Xi. For him, thanks to this strategy, the vast majority of Chinese have been safe.
But such strict lockdowns have backfired on Xi. As revealed a few days ago Vivian WangBeijing correspondent for the New York Times, 530 million Chinese (40% of the country’s population) were under lockdown in November.
(You can read: Sex outside of marriage, the crime that is punishable by jail in Indonesia).
In the rest of the planet, these measures are a thing of the past, not only because of vaccination, but because millions became infected and generated defenses against the virus. covid-19thanks to the fact that the confinements ended and the virus circulated: this makes it clear that the ‘Zero covid’ has been a failure.
In November, 40% of the Chinese population was under some form of confinement.
And a costly failure: the Chinese economy, which used to grow at 6 and 7% annually, has slowed down again and in the third quarter it only advanced 3.9%. In social networks it is common to find stories of people who died because they got sick and, due to confinement, no one came to care for them. Thousands more complain because their pantries and refrigerators ran out of food, and thousands more because their children have not gone to school for many months.
The fatal fire in Urumqui was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The next day, thousands of city dwellers marched against the government, in a de facto breach of the confinement that had been going on for more than three months. Since then, there have been 23 large demonstrations in 17 cities, including Shanghai and the capital Beijing. At first, the marchers chanted “down with the confinement”, but they soon began calling for the resignation of Xi, the ‘Zero covid’ man.
(Also: Iran: the questions about the supposed end of the Morality Police).
In sit-ins at universities in Beijing and Nanjing, hundreds of students imposed the custom of wearing small blank cards, which cover their faces, in protest against censorship. Leader Xi has refrained from commenting and other dignitaries have had to deal with the situation.
On Tuesday 29, the Deputy Prime Minister, sun chunlan, announced changes. He spoke of “a new stage and a new mission” in the fight against the pandemic. He mentioned the “decreasing toxicity” of the Omicron variant and the need to take advantage of “accumulated experience” as arguments for a rapid dismantling of the confinements. On Wednesday he assured that the situation required “a human-centred approach”: a novelty after just six days of protests.
The hijab excuse
The evolution in Iran has been slower and is measured in months. Since the end of September, the world has been following the wave of demonstrations led by young people, mostly women, in rebellion against the totalitarian regime of the ayatollahs
The rejection was initially aimed at the so-called Moral Police, which monitors the streets to demand that, among other rules, women wear appropriate clothing. hijab, that scarf that, according to an interpretation of Islamic law, must cover your head.
On the afternoon of September 13, at a control of the Morale Police in Tehran, Mahsa Amini, A young woman from the north of the country was arrested because she was wearing the hijab incorrectly, as indicated by the dress law of 1983. The agents took her away in a van.
With her body beaten and a fractured skull, Amini was left that night at the gates of a hospital, where she died hours later. Her death triggered the largest wave of demonstrations in Iran in several years, with thousands of girls taking off their hijab and throwing it into the fire shouting “woman, life and freedom”.
The protests in Iran no longer seek the end of the hijab, but the end of the regime.
The force of the protests gave rise to an internal debate at high levels of the government. According to Jonathan Pironhistorian and academic from Belgium, expert on contemporary Iran, officers of the Republican Guard, an elite body of the government, “criticized the Morale Police for behaviors that endanger the survival of the regime.”
The concern of these officers is that the mobilization, which has spread to more than 40 cities and whose repression has left 470 dead and more than 18,000 detainees, is the seed of a revolution. Chasing young people against it can be suicidal for the ayatollahs: 50% of the population are under 35 years of age.
After two months of protest, Iranian leaders significantly reduced patrols by the Morale Police. Questioned this Sunday, Attorney General Mohamad Jafar Montazeri surprised by assuring that the activities of this police “have been stopped by the body that put them into operation.”
The Chinese vice premier surprised by proposing “a human-centred approach.
If confirmed, the news bomb could mark the end of the Moral Police, created in 2006 under the presidency of the radical conservative Mahmud Ahmadinejad. And that wasn’t the only sign of change over the weekend.
the current president Ebrahim Raisi He played on ambiguity Saturday by saying that while the fundamentals of the dress code remain firm, “application of the Constitution can be flexible.” After the first demonstrations in September, Raisí’s statements did not give rise to any flexibility: he then asked that the forces of order act against the protesters “firmly and decisively.”
As the public space disappears Morale Police, young Iranian women have begun to go out with the hijab on their shoulders and not on their heads, or even some without it, and no authority questions them. No one knows if it will be a lasting change.
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Appeasement?
But it would be hasty to say that the protests achieved their goal. In the case of China, the dismantling of the confinements is just beginning and is still generating debate in the highest levels of power. In addition, it is not easy to predict what will happen to the circulation of the virus if the restrictions are dismantled very quickly.
As to IranEven if the dismissal of the Moral Police is confirmed by authorities other than the Attorney General, who does not have that power, no high-ranking dignitary has spoken of dismantling the strict rules of behavior and clothing that millions of young people reject. As recalled yesterday in the Parisian newspaper Libération, the historian Jonathan Pironthose rules are still there and, in addition, “the demands of those who protest are much deeper than the issue of the veil.”
But, both in China and in Iran, what is important perhaps goes beyond these eventual achievements, which may well be part of government appeasement tactics. The key is that the Chinese and Iranians, especially Young people are discovering how much power they have.
In Iran, signs of change took weeks; in China, a few days.
In Iran, after the announcements of concessions, there were new demonstrations and the national strike called for this Monday received significant support in several cities where thousands of businesses closed and many streets looked empty. Something similar could happen in China if the lockdowns are reactivated.
Gisu Nia, A lawyer and human rights activist who monitors the situation in Iran from the United States, thinks, like several experts, that dismantling the hijab requirement ceased to be the objective weeks ago. “The protests -she says- now seek to challenge the system as a whole.” And when positions like that take flight, in Iran as well as in China, not even the regimes more repressive may feel calm.
MAURICIO VARGAS ANALYST EL TIEMPO
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