"Put on the veil or we will kill you."
With these words, an older man rebuked Kosar, a 24-year-old Fine Arts student, on Wednesday when he was returning to his house in Tehran.
He was returning from one of the many demonstrations that have arisen in the country, spurred by the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, on September 16.
The young woman died in police custody, after being arrested for not wearing the veil properly and showing part of her hair.
Student Kosar had taken her headscarf off in the protests and didn't feel like putting it back on.
“The system feels threatened”, she considers, “this outbreak is the result of an unbearable oppression that affects us all, men and women, although it is women who are leading the movement.
I never saw the streets like this before
After a week of protests in Iran, the Islamist government has tried this Friday to show muscle in the street.
It has done so by calling rallies in favor of the Ayatollahs' regime and Islamic law.
"They always use this method: they have enough money to fake a demonstration in support of their fundamentalist postulates," Behnam, a 38-year-old artist and activist, also explains on Telegram.
“They organize this show at least once a year and always with slogans against the United States.
On this occasion, the Government wanted rallies to be organized in the main cities after the Friday prayer.
Everyone knows that they are a fallacy”, continues this man speaking from Isfahan.
Those summoned by the regime, in effect, have drawn a link between the protests over the death of the young woman with the United States and its allies.
“Death to America.
Death to Israel”, chanted the supporters of nothing changing from the University of Tehran and then cheered the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in office since 1989, and his predecessor, Ruhola Khomeini.
"[The protesters] are attacking our women's chadors," cleric Esmaíl Pahlevan told the Efe news agency.
"God has ordained that women wear the hijab," he added.
The concentrations on Friday have been calm, without violence.
Nothing to do with the repression exhibited in the protests that mobilize thousands of citizens in several dozen cities and in which dozens of people have died: 31, according to the NGO Iran Human Rights and 17, according to the official media.
"There are still protests, but also a lot of guards on the streets," says activist Behnam.
“The Iranian system can be very repressive;
the state is strong and the people are afraid.
I have it,” he assures.
A few years ago, he was arrested for attending a feminist demonstration.
He was whipped which has left visible scars on his body.
In the streets of Iran the marches against the machismo of the ayatollahs have not ceased, but the protest has become internationalized.
In the image, a rally in Berlin on September 23.
CHRISTIAN MANG (REUTERS)
A pioneer woman in challenging the regime was Vida Movahed.
On December 27, 2017, on Engelab Street in Tehran, this woman took off her headscarf, tied it to a stick and began waving it silently.
She was alone and her gesture - so simple and at the same time so risky - made her an icon of the fight against compulsory hijab.
Her feat lasted a few minutes;
until a man pushed her and threw her to the ground.
She was sentenced to one year in jail.
“The world thinks these protests are about hijab, but they are not.
Women in Iran have much more serious problems than the veil," explains Yasaman Khleghian, a 33-year-old journalist and activist who has been exiled to Canada since 2020. "The government does not allow us to have an abortion, we cannot leave the country without permission from our husband or father. , we have no right to enter stadiums and if a man kills his daughter,
Shargh
, the most important reformist daily in Iran.
She left the country considering that her life was in danger due to her criticism of her government.
Three years ago, Iran also witnessed powerful citizen protests that left hundreds dead and no assumption of responsibility by the authorities.
Then, the population rose due to the rise in the price of gasoline - in a country with one of the main oil reserves in the world - and the devaluation of its currency, the rial.
But this outburst is different.
Never before have so many women - many young - waved their veils in public.
A contrast with the concentrations in support of the ayatollahs, formed mostly by men.
They also had not dared to burn the fabrics in full view of everyone and in front of government buildings.
“We are many young women protesting;
we are angry and furious,” says 24-year-old Marion from Tehran.
She describes women, who come accompanied by friends,
brothers, parents or boyfriends, who support the clamor of the Iranians.
“The difference between these protests and the previous ones is not the female presence;
we have always fought alongside men”, considers the Iranian journalist exiled in Canada.
"The difference is that these protests, born out of the pain of Masha's murder and with the veil as the protagonist, have become generalized and have involved all sectors of society," she clarifies.
01:30
Cutting your hair: a vindictive gesture by Mahsa Amini in Iran |
THE COUNTRY
A woman cuts her hair at a demonstration in the Netherlands. Photo: LEX VAN LIESHOUT (EFE) |
Video: EPV
The pressure that Iranian women endure is incomparable with that which falls on men.
Although they also suffer from a lack of freedoms, girls who were born 10 or 20 years after the Islamic Revolution have never been able to leave home without a headscarf, in a miniskirt or short sleeves.
Their mothers could and never imagined that the triumph of the revolution would lead to four such dark decades.
All that collective suffering has been condensed in this revolt.
“We don't have a leader of the revolution.
There are no politicians here.
We are the people and we need the world not to forget what is happening”, claims Niloofar, 25 years old.
She speaks on Telegram and from her house in Tehran.
"At any moment the Internet will be disconnected," she warns.
He fully understands how Mahsa Amini must have felt after being arrested:
“I will never forget the fear and stress I experienced when I was taken into custody.
It is a feeling that I cannot erase,” says Niloofar.
He also denounces the "indescribable" political corruption that exists in the country and that has forced hundreds of thousands of people into poverty.
“There are many women with university degrees who do not have a job.
Neither do our fellow men.
And it is inadmissible in a country with the wealth of Iran.”
For his part, the activist Behman also believes that this revolt is different: “The citizen culture has changed.
Before, families applied conservative Islamic rules at home, to their children, but not anymore: we have come together to fight against the Islamist dictatorship.
Of course, the repression has also become harsher and crueler: we have lost our youth and now, our blood and our bodies.
A female lament that started in 1979
Iranian women have never been in the background when it comes to expressing the population's discomfort.
In 1979, they protested en masse when the new government announced that the veil would become a compulsory garment.
So, they shouted that they had not participated in a revolution to go back.
The forced veil was followed by the derogation of many rights, which they had achieved during the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who tried to modernize a country that suffered from serious social inequalities.
Over the years, a less strict way of wearing the hijab has become more widespread, while campaigns have emerged from abroad encouraging Iranian women to publicly protest its compulsory use.
The movement baptized as
White Wednesdays
, which invites you to wear a white veil on Wednesdays, was promoted by the Iranian journalist residing in the US Masih Alinejad.
“We need the world not to abandon us.
We have always been alone.
The West looks elsewhere when it comes to Iran.
Please don't abandon us”, asks the 24-year-old student Kosar.
A clamor that is shared from abroad by many expatriates and exiles.
Mina Joshghani is one of them.
She resides in the UK, but until 2019 she was working as a journalist in Iran.
She went to London to study and is now a well-known voice on the BBC's Persian channel.
Working at the British network prevents her from returning to Iran with security guarantees, so when she wants to see her family, she does so in Istanbul.
“These days in the street people are shouting: 'From Kurdistan to Tehran, how far do you want to suppress women in Iran?
It seems that this time the women have decided that they will not stop,
and this is a sign of how fed up they are with not having freedom.
People are not scared anymore, they just can't take it anymore,” adds Joshghani.
The feeling that something has changed is shared by Yasaman Khleghian, 33: “I have participated in street demonstrations since I was 18, and I can assure you that the demonstrations of the last few days are unique.
Until now I had not seen so much unity.
This may be the first step to eliminate the hijab law, ”says the journalist, who wishes she could participate in the riots.
Despite the momentum of the protests, many women fear that nothing will change.
And they trust that the world will not leave the Iranians alone.
Not this time.
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