Jina Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody shocked people around the world and plunged the Islamic Republic into the biggest political crisis in decades. What have the protests achieved so far?
From the correspondents of the Dpa
12/25/2022 – 5:11
Tehran – When young Iranian Kurdish Jina Mahsa Amini lay dying in a hospital 100 days ago, many people in Iran already had suspicions. A photo of the 22-year-old with a breathing tube and eyes closed in an intensive care unit in the capital, Tehran, is spreading rapidly.
Many already speculate that Amini suffered violence after his arrest by the moral guards. The notorious morality police had taken the student away just three days earlier due to an unsuitable headscarf. He dies, and the day after his death, anger and sadness explode in a first manifestation. Starting in Amini’s home province of Kurdistan, protests are spreading like wildfire across the country.
Three months of protests and civil disobedience
For more than three months, people of different social backgrounds and generations have been demonstrating against the repressive policies and system of the Islamic Republic. The security apparatus has reacted extremely severely, more than 500 protesters have already been killed, according to human rights activists.
Protest supporters sometimes defend themselves violently. While street protests have eased somewhat recently following government actions, many experts are now speaking of a “revolutionary movement.”
Fatemeh Shams, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the US, describes the protests as “the biggest challenge to the core of the current regime and its ideology in the past 43 years”. He sees a lot of resentment behind the demonstrations. “I don’t think they realized how much they had lost touch with real society, with real people, with the new generation. And to be faced with that was a big shock for them.”
Street protests are accompanied by creative protests and civil disobedience: protesters, for example, remove turbans from mullahs, fill public fountains with fake blood or daub posters of influential statesmen with red paint.
The political leadership in Tehran follows an iron course
The leadership of the Islamic Republic continues to take a hard line against the protesters. In Kurdish areas, for example, the Revolutionary Guards and the notorious Basij militias have used live ammunition in armored vehicles to thwart riots. Numerous prominent athletes, artists and actresses who show solidarity with the protests are summoned, interrogated and arrested. Tehran speaks of a “foreign conspiracy” and blames the crisis on its bitter enemies, the US and Israel.
Politicians from the reformist camp, such as former President Mohammed Chatami, are trying to criticize the government’s repressive course. But many young protesters dismiss even more moderate leaders as “men of the system”. No words of reconciliation are heard from the political leadership itself.
“There is a misconception among Western politicians that reform parties fought for women’s rights. This is wrong,” says Shams. She points out that a law establishing the notorious moral police was passed under Khatami.
International reactions and solidarity
From the outset, the protests have been accompanied by a broad wave of international solidarity. Above all, the large Iranian community abroad supports criticism of the course of government and calls for a change of political system in Iran.
Many Western governments abroad have accepted a deterioration in bilateral relations with sharp criticism of Tehran. Negotiations to revive the nuclear deal that would prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb remain on hold.
executions as a deterrent
The execution of two protesters in December sparked widespread criticism and dismay in Iran and internationally. Human rights activists see the executions as an attempt to stifle protests through deterrence. However, the fast-tracked verdicts have also met with great rejection from religious and traditional strata in Iran.
“Even the majority of the traditional and religious population of the country is shocked by the brutal violence in the name of Islam”, explains the expert Shams. Islamic preachers in Iran also condemned the executions.
“Today we are dealing with a regime that is visibly unpopular with many different social classes, with the new generations of the country, with women and with the majority of male citizens,” says Shams. However, he criticizes the protest movement’s hopes for rapid systemic change. “If they completely silenced people this time and let the world get away with it, it would shake civil society to its foundations because basically people had nothing left to lose.”
