In Iran, women lead the revolt for a freer society

For thirteen days, theWill it is crossed by vast protests against the regime, repressed with the usual harshness. In the country, the Internet was disconnected for “security reasons” and at least 76 people died in the clashes. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will grant state funerals to the dead police, while Tehran provincial governor Mohsen Mansouri said action would be taken against celebrities who “fueled the protests”, such as Iranian soccer player Sardar. The protests started in the Kurdish town of Saqqez, hometown of Mahsa Amini.

Mahsa Amini was 22 years old and a Kurdish girl visiting Tehran with her family to visit relatives. While on the subway with her brother, she was stopped and then arrested by the so-called “morality police” and taken to a detention center. Mahsa was not arrested for not wearing the hijab, as required by Iranian law, or for wearing clothes that reveal her body, but simply because some hairs were coming out of the veil. As Iranian-American journalist Farnaz Fassihi told The New York Times, all Iranian women know about that infamous detention center and know that they will have to visit it at least once in their lifetime. She had also been brought there on one occasion and had to swear that from that day forward she would always abide by the law of the veil.

The behavior of the morality police is unpredictable: sometimes it’s a verbal reprimand, sometimes a fine. Sometimes, as in the case of Mahsa Amini, of a beating that could be fatal: Amini’s skull was fractured and photos that were released by the family while he was in a coma in the hospital clearly show that he was bleeding from his ears. Amini died the day after the beating, but the images of her internment were enough to ignite the protest, before the internet was shut down. To lead you, women, who freed themselves from the veiloften also cutting their hair with a strongly symbolic gesture.

According to the latest UN Human Rights Council report on the situation in Iran, women are treated as “second-class citizens”, unable to participate sufficiently in public life and enjoying little protection from domestic violence. Then there is the problem of child marriage, in a country where the minimum age for marriage is 13. According to government estimates, more than 30,000 girls between the ages of 10 and 14 are given in marriage every year. However, the protests are not just about the status of women. It is not the first time that Iranians have taken to the streets against the government: in 2019, 1,500 people were killed during demonstrations against rising oil prices. Today, many have joined the protests over the death of Mahsa Amini due to the prevailing poverty in the country, already severely tested by international sanctions first and then Covid.

According to researcher Chowra Makaremi, interviewed by the Guardian, there is something new in these protests: the government responded very harshly, but in the past it had immediately fielded the Revolutionary Guard, an army corps founded by the particularly violent Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which has the specific task of suppressing dissent against the regime. The death of Mahsa Amini, also thanks to international resonance, put question the inability of the regime and the very fact that it was women who provoked the revolt is particularly significant. The obligation of the veil, even observed by a moral police, is perhaps the most obvious and recognizable element of the Islamic interpretation of religion. Since its existence, the regime has wanted to make women’s bodies an instrument of political propaganda to justify and strengthen an exclusively male power, by which women must be commanded and judged.

There Iranian policy is illiberal and repressive for all people living in the country. As the UN report recalls, in Iran there are continuous violations of human rights, political dissent is repressed with blood, the death penalty is arbitrarily applied and many cases of torture take place in prisons. Journalists, activists and trade unionists hated by the regime, sometimes even foreigners or with dual citizenship, have been imprisoned for years without enjoying their rights. In this context, the control of women’s bodies becomes a catalyst for all repressive policies, a kind of constant reminder – for those who live in the country and for those who observe it from outside – of those who hold power.

Starting the riot, the Iranians ran away from that control, demonstrating once again that the freedom of a society is measured by the freedom that women have to choose, to dress as they wish, to walk freely in the streets, to use religious symbols if and as they wish. The regime’s response has arrived, but this time it is having more difficulty than usual to make itself heard, perhaps also because an unexpected person is leading these riots.