September 23, 2022
by Warren L. Nelson
Mass protests have erupted in cities all across Iran in response to the death in captivity of a young Kurdish woman after her arrest for violating the dress code.
The protests are widespread. The BBC, IranWire, The New York Times and Radio Farda have all said protests have erupted in about 80 cities, not a record but definitely widespread.
Government forces have replied with batons, tear gas and water cannons. In some video clips, gunfire can be heard.
The protests appear largely spontaneous and without any national leadership.
Significantly, there were protests in neighborhoods all over Tehran, including both south Tehran and north Tehran. Demonstrations in recent years have almost entirely been limited to the provinces with Tehranis not protesting in any large numbers in the last 13 years.
Notably, students at Tehran’s universities joined in the protests. The protests of the last decade have been notable for the absence of student involvement, just as the major student outbreaks of 1999 and 2009 were notable for the absence of any large non-student groups or provincial participants. In other words, the protests appeared to be the most widespread both geographically and demographically since 1979—but far from the scale of 1979.
Previous protests in the last few years have focused on the 2019 hike in gasoline prices, water shortages in many provinces, inflation, low pensions and a host of other issues, many of them local ones. The current outbreak of protests nationally is clearly focused on two issues: 1) women’s rights (especially the dress code) and 2) regime incompetence, feeding on the widespread view, even among staunch regime supporters, that the Raisi Administration is stunningly inept.
The centrality of the dress code is underscored by the growing number of women posting pictures on social media showing them burning their headscarves and using scissors to cut off their tresses. But the upsurge in opposition to the dress code is a direct result of an order last spring from Raisi to enforce the dress code much more strictly than ever before, leading to many more arrests of women and much more irritation among the public, both male and female.
One question many are asking is whether the regime will now recognize the widespread opposition to mandatory head-covering—even from many who choose to wear the chador—and end police coercion of women. A handful of Majlis deputies have publicly said the regime needs to take a softer view on hejab or risk increasing opposition. However, at many Friday prayers September 23—one week into the protests—many clerics were reported as insisting on firm enforcement of the mandatory hejab rules.
In Mashhad, the Friday prayer leader, Ahmad Alam-ol-hoda—who is the father-in-law of President Raisi—said, “Hejab is the most important issue in Islam. The enemies of Islam wish to promote a lifestyle without hejab….Women’s hair corrupts young men just as half-naked women do.”
The issue arose—although no one knew it at the time—September 13 when Mahsa Amini, known as Zhina in her Kurdish community—came out of a Metro station in Tehran, where she was visiting with her brother, and was stopped by the Morality Police (Gasht-e Ershad) for failing to cover her hair sufficiently.
She was taken to a Morality Police station to be held with others to undergo a lecture on adherence to the dress code. Soon after her arrival, she was taken to Kasra Hospital. Three days later, she was dead and the protests erupted that night, September 16.
The protesters insist that Amini was beaten to death. The regime says she died from a heart attack.
All agree that she was arrested for a dress code violation and taken to the morality police headquarters in Vozara Street.
The government has released video from a security camera inside the police station. A woman the authorities said was Amini is seen walking in and taking a seat. Soon, she stands up and walks over to a female police officer. They talk briefly and the woman identified as Amini lifts up the dangling end of her headscarf, as if to say she was in compliance with the dress code. The policewoman takes up the end of the scarf and tosses it aside dismissively, then turns and walks away.
The woman identified as Amini lifts her hands to her head, turns to her right and leans over the back of a chair as if she were sick. She then crumples and falls to the floor.
Others say Amini was beaten, both in the van that took her to Vozara Street and in the police station there. They have posted copies of what they say is a hospital head scan showing brain damage. Photos taken of Amini lying in a hospital bed seem to show blood draining from her ear, indicating a head injury.
In support of the regime’s explanation, a medical doctor, Masud Shirvani, identified as a neurosurgeon, told state television that Amini had had a brain tumor removed as an eight-year-old . Her father, however, said she never had surgery of any kind.
Her father, Amjad Amini, said he had been denied a copy of his daughter’s autopsy report and was only allowed to see her body when it was prepared for burial with only her face and feet visible. He said he noticed bruises on her feet. In an interview with BBC Farsi, he also said that his daughter always wore clothing in compliance with the dress code and that his son, who was with the young woman when she was arrested, also said she was in compliance at the time of her arrest.
The outburst over Amini’s death has prompted many calls for the Morality Police to be abolished. Over the years, the force—largely comprised of women—has been viewed as an unadulterated annoyance, especially by fathers summoned to bring appropriate clothing to the local Morality Police station before their daughters can be released.
The call for abolition of the force has now been heard in the Majlis and been endorsed by two ayatollahs, Mohaqeq Damad and Bayat Zanjani. Damad said, “The creation of a force for promoting virtue and preventing vice is, in fact, meant to monitor the actions of rulers, not to crack down on citizen freedoms; it is a deviation from Islamic teachings.” Zanjani said, “No part of our country’s laws assigns any mission or responsibility to this vigilante body,” accusing it of committing “repression and immoral acts.”
US and European officials responded with a flurry of statements condemning Iran for enforcing a dress code and calling on the Islamic Republic to change its policies. The Americans and Europeans were far more vocal about the Amini case than they have been about any other individual instance of human rights abuse in four decades.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was just one of many officials speaking out. He said, “The United States condemns the tragic and brutal death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in the custody of the Iranian Morality Police.”
Some thought the strong American reaction was based on the belief that the protests might grow in scale and topple the regime, though most analysts and US officials said they did not think the protests were of a great enough scale to do that.
The US government also issued swift sanctions against the Morality Police as an institution, the national chief of the Morality Police, the Tehran chief of the Morality Police and five other Iranian officials the US said were involved in suppressing dissent and killing non-violent protesters.
All such sanctions are little more than symbolic, however. All they do is freeze any assets the Morality Police or the seven sanctioned people have in the United States and bar Americans from doing business with those sanctioned.
The Iranian media did not devote a great deal of attention to the US remarks, which was curious, given that the regime routinely likes to blame foreigners for sparking opposition within Iran. But the governor general of Tehran province announced the arrest of three foreigners for working on the ground to spark violent protests. He hinted they were diplomats, which would exclude Americans since there are no US diplomats in Iran. Significantly, however, he did not name the foreigners he claimed had been arrested or even identify them by nationality. And no foreign government has yet announced the recent arrest of any of its nationals in Iran. Oddly, few regime defenders echoed the allegation, suggesting few believed it to be true.
Various numbers on deaths and arrests have been published, but need to be taken with a grain of salt.
After eight days of protests, state television said it had documented 41 deaths. Most would take that as a minimal number. However, it may have been made up in response to criticisms that it was avoiding reporting deaths. The Mojahedin-e Khalq reported that 140 people had died, the largest number the Iran Times has seen.
The protests appear to have been most violent in Kurdish areas. This is logical given that Amini was Kurdish and hailed from Saqqez in Kurdistan province.
As for arrests, the Interior Ministry has issued no number for countrywide arrests. However, the chief of police for Gilan province said his forces had arrested 739 over the first week of protests—a huge number for a mid-sized province and a larger number than the 500 some opposition groups had reported for the entire country. The Mojahedin-e Khalq have claimed 5,000 arrests.
The five Tehran campuses reporting mass protests were the University of Tehran, Amir Kabir University, Shahid Beheshti University, Tarbiat Modarress University and Allameh Tabatabai University.
The broad scope of interest among Iranians is demonstrated by the fact that the Persian hashtag #MahsaAmini had drawn 40 million mentions on Twitter in the seven days after her death, according to Iran International. That is in a country with a population of 85 million.
In one of the more dramatic video clips that have been posted on social media, police, many on motorcycles, are seen blocking a major street in Tabriz. About 50 meters in front of them, hundreds of protesters mill about. Then, suddenly, the protesters charge the police at full speed. The police quickly turn and flee.
The protesters have mostly chanted en masse and thrown rocks at police, with some setting fire to police cars and many blocking roads with large trash bins in which the trash has been set ablaze. The Health Ministry said that 61 ambulances were destroyed around the country by rioters in the first week. Some opposition figures said the police were using ambulances in order to get closer to protesters undetected.
A regime banking official, Alireza Gheytasi, said 240 banks had been attacked by protesters with 12 destroyed and 11 seriously damaged. It is normal in large-scale rioting in Iran for banks and other public buildings to be attacked.
But the most dramatic and “revolutionary” report held that Oshnavieh, a city of 40,000 mostly Kurdish residents, had been taken over by residents who seized the Pasdar headquarters and three Basij bases, forcing the Pasdaran and Basiji to flee. Reports said residents had set up roadblocks in anticipation of a counter-attack by the Pasdaran to reclaim the city.
Meanwhile, demonstrations in sympathy with the protests have been staged all across the United States and Canada, plus in Australia, Germany, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Chile, Sweden, Lebanon, The Netherlands and Turkey. Most have been organized by Iranian expatriates and Kurdish groups.
In his address to the UN General Assembly September 21, Raisi accused the world of a double standard for criticizing Iran for ill-treatment of women while ignoring other such cases. He specifically cited Canada and its history of serious mistreatment of women in indigenous communities. He seemed unaware of the fact that the perpetrators of crimes against Canadian indigenous women are mostly Canadian indigenous men, while, in the case of Iran, it is Raisi being accused of ordering harsh treatment of Iranian women.
Some commentators on social media pointed out that when George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on his neck, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi called that a “brutal” act that exposed “the true nature of the rulers of the United States.”
Netblocks, an international organization that monitors internet restrictions, said Iran’s biggest telecom operator had largely shut down mobile internet access. Widespread outages of Instagram and WhatsApp, which are the chief means for protesters to coordinate their actions, were reported daily.
IranWire listed a dozen chants it had heard in social media postings. They included the familiar “Marg bar Dictator” (Death to the Dictator) and “Reza Shah, Roohet Shad (Reza Shah, God Bless Your Soul,” plus such new ones as, “Jomhuri Eslami, Ne Mikhahim, Ne Mikhahim” (We don’t want, we don’t want, Islamic Republic) and “Esteghlal, Azadi, Hejab Ekhtiari” (Independence, Freedom, Optional Hejab) plus “Zan, zendegi, azadi (Woman, life, freedom).
The government announced that it would hold a full investigation into the Amini arrest and death. Brig. Gen. Majid Mir-Ahmadi, the deputy interior minister for security affairs, was named to lead the investigation, although his office would logically be one of the subjects of an investigation. He soon issued a statement: “Anyone disseminating information that will later prove to contradict the truth about the event will naturally be investigated for agitating public opinion and endangering the mental health of society.”
Ali Daei, the soccer legend and former captain of the national soccer team, posted a picture of Amini on his Instagram page with the following message: “What have you done to the country? My daughter asks what happened. What can I tell her?”
Oscar-winning film director Asghar Farhadi, who has made a career of avoiding comments on political topics so as not to endanger his ability to make films, stepped out of his usual comfort zone and said, “We are pretending to be asleep in the face of this never-ending oppression. We are all partners in this crime.”
