In a few days it will be two months since the murder of Masha Amini, the young Iranian woman who was killed by the Moral Police for wearing the veil incorrectly.
Since then, the repression exerted by the Guardians of the Revolution on the protest movement promoted by the youth has reached an unimaginable level of violence: the arrests -12,500, according to the NGOs- and the murders in the middle of the street, in full view of all, they have become everyday scenes.
In the face of barbarism, the mobilization of young people is more alive than ever.
The enormous courage they show arouses a certain sadness when observing the little attention that this revolt, considered by sociologists such as Smaïn Laacher as perhaps the largest ongoing feminist revolution in the world, receives in the media.
An inattention that networks compensate,
Les lycéennes in #Iran, 17 days after the assassination of #MahsaAmini: pic.twitter.com/b48iguRoq8
— Farid Vahid (@FaridVahiid) October 3, 2022
Like the Arab spring, social networks are a fundamental tool of the Iranian youth's protest: recording attacks on symbols of political power has become a trend in itself.
In the numerous videos that circulate on the Internet, we see young women, and even grandmothers, taking off their veils and cutting their hair, others dancing in the street, students doing a comb on the portrait of Ali Khamenei (current supreme leader of the Islamic Revolution), and Rouhollah Khomeini (former leader of the 1979 Revolution), graffiti of insults directed at the leaders in the streets of the main cities of the country or even at adolescents to popularize the dangerous
game of the turban
, which consists of removing with a hit the
mullahs turban
(clerics) who pass each other on the street and then run away.
Something that in the West would be childish — who didn't play pranks on the village priest as a child or adolescent — but in Iran she can cost the author his life or at least send him to jail.
#Iran |
महिला ने रास्ते चल रहे मौलवियों के सिर से पगड़ी उतार फेंकी, वीडियो सोशल मीडिया पर वायरल
— Abcnews.media (@abcnewsmedia) November 5, 2022
In recent days, the video of Taraneh Alidoosti, one of the most famous artists in Iran, known abroad for her roles in Asghar Farhadi's films, has gone viral.
Without a veil and looking at the camera, Alidoosti assures that she will stop working and that she will stay in Iran to support the families of the victims of the repression.
She will fight for her rights "whatever the price."
The courage of the actress — the protagonist of a scandal in 2016 by inadvertently revealing a raised fist tattooed on her forearm at a press conference — stuns many Twitter users who anticipate the consequences that this gesture may have for the protagonist of
The salesman
.
She would not be the first to disappear and end up being killed by the police for a simple public position.
Weeks earlier, the singer Shervin Hajipour, a very popular musician in Iran, was arrested.
His crime: a video in which he performed the song
Barayeh
, which would become the anthem of the revolt (40 million views in the first 48 hours), and in which tweets were paraded asking for freedom from a generation that it has only known the repression and power of the ayatollahs.
نغمه ى ترانه هاى آزادى و برابرى #ترانه_علیدوستی #مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/CFuqrgqgrC
— Golshifteh Farahani (@Golshifteh) November 9, 2022
1. The single best way to understand Iran's uprising is not any book or essay, but Shervin Hajipour's 2m anthem "Baraye" which garnered over 40m views in 48h (before he was imprisoned).
Its depth requires multiple views.
pic.twitter.com/sk0wsW0Cfh (Translation by @BBCArdalan)
— Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) October 2, 2022
Hajipour's song – later released on bail – acquired another dimension when, on October 28, the group Coldplay performed it during a concert in Buenos Aires, accompanied by another Farhadi muse, the exiled actress Golshifteh Farahani.
Hopefully this gesture and the hundreds of videos that flood the networks these days will serve so that the rest of the world does not forget the unprecedented courage that the Iranian youth is showing.
ENORMOUS.
The group @coldplay accompanies the guitar to the voice of Shervin Hajjipour who interprets «Barayeh (Pour)», l'hymne de la révolte in #Iran vendredi October 28 lors de leur concert in Buenos Aires in Argentine.
#MahsaAmini pic.twitter.com/BKqphcjhgW
– Armin Arefi (@arminarefi) October 29, 2022