Article from Issue #50 (October 7, 2022)
Woman, Life, Freedom
by Mark Hall
On September 13th of this year in Iran, a young woman named Mahsa Amini traveled to Tehran to visit her brother. When she arrived, she was detained by the "morality police" because she was wearing her mandatory hijab (head scarf) in an improper fashion which allowed some of her hair to show. While in custody, she was beaten severely and fell into a coma. She died three days later in hospital.
Since then, Iran has seen the largest public demonstrations against its government in years. Thousands of people of all ages are coming to the streets with slogans such as "Woman, Life, Freedom" (in Farsi, ژن، ژیان، ئازادی which is pronounced zan, zendegi, azadi). Women are leading the protests, taking off their hijabs and even publicly burning them.
These protests have not just been in Iran itself. There are many Persian communities worldwide who have staged massive public protests in solidarity with the cause. I attended one of those events a few weeks ago with my wife (who was born in Iran) and our two small children, in downtown Vancouver.
It was amazing to see how many people were there with one common goal, expressing it freely. There were police all around, providing security for the protestors and directing traffic. We felt completely safe, since in our country we have the freedom to protest without fear of violent crackdowns by the government.
In Iran, however, things are quite different. As of this writing, the protests have been going for four weeks and at least 185 people have been killed (the true number is likely higher than 200). Videos of brutality against the protesters have been coming out despite government-imposed internet blackouts and blocking of social media services. And this is nothing new for the regime; there have been many major protest movements in past years, and the crackdown has always been brutal and violent. Unlike in the protest that I attended here in Vancouver, these people are risking their lives to speak against the repressive regime.
When I first heard of the protests, I felt pessimistic, since I've seen this happen before. The end result is always the same. When they've killed, arrested, and beaten enough protesters, the movement stops, repressed by fear. I fully expected the same thing to happen this time.
However, I'm starting to think that this time may be actually different. First off, while this protest may appear to be about the restrictive hijab laws and their enforcement by the morality police, it is quite obviously about much more than that. It is about the regime itself, which has grown increasingly out of touch with and increasingly outnumbered by the younger generations.
But in my opinion, there is one important factor that has been severely underestimated that is going to make all the difference this time: this movement is led by women.
The hijab is a symbol of the regime's suppression of women, and it's only the most immediately visible form. They are also restricted from singing or performing in public, from appearing in public with men who are not their husband or a relative, from attending sports games, from leaving the country without their husband's permission, and many other things.
Women in Iran are quite simply fed up with it. The death of Mahsa Amini was the last straw. The rage of decades of repression and abuse has reached its boiling point, and I think these protests are a full-blown revolution in its opening stages. This is an existential threat to the theocratic regime. They have unleashed the power of women that they have tried to extinguish since they came into power in 1979.
In fact, I think that was the reason they did all of this in the first place. They feared the power of women, and instead of embracing it, they tried to stamp it out. Now they are face to face with their greatest fear.
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