Iran: A new dimension of protests

For the past three weeks, people have been taking to the streets in Iran every day. They are demanding nothing less than the end of the Islamic Republic. Their leadership continues to react with massive use of force and arrests more and more demonstrators and critics.

“Mahsa Amini’s death just changed everything. Things that we hoped for but somehow never thought possible are happening now,” writes a young Iranian on Instagram. When the first people took to the streets in Iran three weeks ago, on September 16, hardly anyone, not even in Iran, expected the dynamics and dimensions of the protests to develop as they progressed.

In order to understand them, it is worth taking a look at the past few years. Since then, protests have been the order of the day in Iran. There were demonstrations against corruption and mismanagement, high food prices, due to water shortages or because wages were not being paid to workers and pensioners across the country.

But protests in Iran are regularly nipped in the bud. Until recently, the brutal suppression of demonstrations in November 2019 was omnipresent in Iran. Hundreds of people are said to have been shot or beaten to death by security forces at the time. The US government and the Reuters news agency even assume that more than 1,000 demonstrators have been killed.

Taking part in protests can be deadly

So in Iran, people know full well that taking part in a protest can mean death. You can see that at the moment. The human rights organization Amnesty International reported on Thursday: It is now assumed that more than 130 demonstrators have been killed. In the southeast of the country alone, 82 people, including children, are said to have been killed by Iranian regime forces last Friday. After Friday prayers in the city of Zahedan, demonstrators, bystanders and visitors to Friday prayers were shot with live ammunition.

More and more cases of killed young people are also becoming public. Among them was 16-year-old Nika Shakarami, who suddenly disappeared. According to a report by BBC Farsi, the girl had recently sent a desperate message to a friend, saying that security forces were following her.

The family is said to have found the daughter’s body ten days later in a morgue in Tehran and has since raised charges of murder against the Iranian secret service and the police. Several family members are said to have been threatened and a burial of the girl was prevented by the family.

“We’ll keep going until they’re tired”

All these incidents are happening on social media in Iran. Although they have been largely blocked since shortly after the protests broke out, they can be reached at least temporarily via detours and various VPNs. In various chat groups, including Telegram, users write: “We’ll keep going until you’re tired.” Despite all the risks.

Pictures of exhausted police officers are being shared more and more often. A woman who wishes to remain anonymous reports the ARD: “The police officers in our neighborhood are extremely tired. Some of them just stand around and watch. None of them speak to a girl if she walks past him without a headscarf. I think some even think it’s a good thing.”

Iran’s final report: Amini died of ‘disease’

It is different with the so-called Basij militias, an auxiliary police force loyal to the system, which is popularly referred to as a gang of thugs. Wherever they appeared, they immediately used violence against possible demonstrators or women without a headscarf, the woman said. You can see more and more of that on the streets of Tehran. Young women in particular walk the streets without a headscarf at all, and they are often applauded by passing cars, according to several eyewitnesses.

But the headscarf itself has long ceased to be the focus of the protests. Even if that is said to have been the reason for the arrest of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. In the case of the 22-year-old, the authorities published a final report today. Amini died as a result of an illness, it says, not from beatings and abuse, as eyewitnesses report. A portrayal that hardly anyone in Iran is likely to believe – and which, moreover, is not given any attention.

A new picture of dimensions

“They still haven’t realized that it’s been about them for a long time,” writes a Twitter user, referring to the Islamic leadership. She must have understood it. After all, “Down with the Islamic Republic” and “Death to the dictator” are the most shouted slogans at the protests. However, the regime continues to dismiss the demonstrators on state television as a small minority of rioters and troublemakers controlled from abroad.

BBC data journalists paint a different picture of the scale of the protests. Based on an evaluation of more than 1000 videos, hashtags and geo-locations, they were able to prove several dozens of protests in different parts of the country every day over the past three weeks. That alone: ​​a new dimension. The places where the protests take place are also new: more and more videos show protests by schoolchildren. It is not uncommon for them to tear down the obligatory picture of the revolutionary leader and his predecessor from the classroom walls.

Observer: Regime will crack down even more

Most observers agree that the regime will continue to step up its crackdown on the protests. In recent days there has already been a massive wave of intimidation and arrests, not only among demonstrators but also among potential critics in the country, including artists, filmmakers and women’s rights activists.

The most famous of them is the lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was awarded the alternative Nobel Prize. She has already been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison, partly because she defended women in court who had publicly removed their headscarves in recent years.

Sotoudeh, who has been under house arrest in Tehran for some time for medical reasons, gave an interview to Time magazine a few days ago. In it she said: “I see under no circumstances that they can turn back the clock, no matter what means they use to suppress everything,” said Sotoudeh. “Reality has already shifted significantly.” She received a phone call shortly after the article appeared. She has to go back to prison.