100 days after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini

A photo showing the 22-year-old with breathing tube and eyes closed in an intensive care unit in the capital Tehran is spreading quickly. Many people already assume that Amini must have been the victim of violence after her arrest by the moral guards. The notorious vice police had taken the student away three days earlier because of an ill-fitting headscarf. She dies, and the day after her death, anger and grief erupt in a first demonstration. Starting in Amini’s home province of Kurdistan, protests are spreading like wildfire across the country.

Three months of protests and civil disobedience

For more than three months, people from different walks of life and generations have been demonstrating against the repressive policies and system of the Islamic Republic. The security apparatus reacted extremely harshly, according to estimates by human rights activists, more than 500 demonstrators have already been killed. The supporters of the protests sometimes violently defend themselves. Although street protests have eased recently following the government’s actions, many experts now speak of a ‘revolutionary movement’.

Fatemeh Shams, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the US, describes the protests as “the greatest challenge to the core of the current regime and its ideology in the past 43 years”. She sees a lot of resentment behind the demonstrations. “I don’t think they realized how much they had lost touch with real society, with real people, with the new generation. And to be confronted with that was a big shock to her.” The street protests are accompanied by creative protest and civil disobedience – for example, protesters push the turbans of the mullahs off their heads, fill public fountains with fake blood or smear posters of influential statesmen with red paint.

Political leadership in Tehran is on an iron course

The leadership of the Islamic Republic continues to crack down on the demonstrators. For example, in the Kurdish areas, the Revolutionary Guards and the notorious Basij militias used live ammunition in armored vehicles to counter insurgencies. Numerous prominent athletes, artists and actresses who show solidarity with the protests are summoned, interrogated and arrested. Tehran speaks of a “foreign conspiracy” and blames its arch enemies, the US and Israel, for the crisis.

Politicians from the reform camp, such as ex-president Mohammed Chatami, are trying to criticize the government’s repressive course. But many young protesters dismiss even more moderate leaders as “men of the system”. No words of reconciliation can be heard from the political leadership itself. “There is a misconception among Western politicians that the reform parties fought for women’s rights. That’s not right,” says Shams. She points out that a law was passed under Khatami establishing the notorious vice police.

International reactions and solidarity

Since the beginning, the protests have been accompanied by a broad wave of international solidarity. Above all, the large Iranian community abroad supports criticism of the government’s course and demands for a political system change in Iran. Many Western governments abroad have accepted a deterioration in bilateral relations with strong criticism of Tehran. Negotiations to revive the nuclear deal that would stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb remain on hold.

executions as a deterrent

The execution of two protesters in December sparked much criticism and dismay in Iran and internationally. Human rights activists see the executions as an attempt to quell the protests through deterrence. However, the accelerated sentences also met with strong rejection from parts of Iran’s religious and traditional strata. “Even the majority of the country’s traditional, religious population is shocked by the brutal violence in the name of Islam,” said expert Shams. Islamic ministers in Iran also condemned the executions.

“We are dealing today with a regime that is visibly unpopular with many different social classes, with the new generations of the country, with women and with the majority of male citizens,” says Shams. However, she is critical of the protest movement’s hopes for rapid systemic change. “If they completely shut people up this time and let the world get away with it, civil society would be shaken to its very foundations because people essentially have nothing left to lose.”

(SDA)