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  • Will Iranian Protests Grow Into a “Nationwide Revolution” Despite Crackdown?

    The situation in Iran is “critical” as authorities tighten their crackdown on the continuing anti-government protests after the September death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the so-called morality police. United Nations human rights officials report Iranian security forces in Kurdish cities killed dozens of protesters this week alone, with each funeral turning into a mass rally against the central government. “The defiance has been astounding,” says Middle East studies professor Nahid Siamdoust, who reported for years from Iran, including during the 2009 Green Movement, and calls the protests a “nationwide revolution.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: We’re broadcasting live from downtown Cairo in Egypt with the Nile River flowing behind us.

    We begin today’s show in Iran, where human rights authorities say the situation has become critical, with reports of dozens of children being killed, injured and detained at recent anti-government demonstrations. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday that worsening repression by Iranian security forces has led to a rising number of deaths, especially in Kurdish cities. This is spokesperson Jeremy Laurence.

    JEREMY LAURENCE: Since the nationwide protests began on the 16th of September, over 300 people have been killed, including more than 40 children. Two 16-year-old boys were among six killed over the weekend. Protesters have been killed in 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces, including more than 100 in Sistan and Balochistan. Iranian official sources have also reported that a number of security forces have been killed since the start of the protests. …

    We call on the authorities to release all those detained in relation to the exercise of their rights, including the right to peaceful assembly, and to drop the charges against them. Our office also calls on the Iranian authorities to immediately impose a moratorium on the death penalty and to revoke death sentences issued for crimes not qualifying as the most serious crimes under international law.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: This comes as the BBC reports authorities have not been releasing protesters’ bodies unless their families remain silent. Some say they were pressured by security officials to go along with state media reports that their loved ones were killed by, quote, “rioters.”

    On Monday, Iran’s national soccer team declined to sing the national anthem before their opening World Cup match in a sign of support for the protests.

    AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, on Sunday, two of Iran’s most prominent actresses were arrested after they voiced support for anti-government protests and appeared in public without wearing a hijab, as required by law. Ahead of her arrest on Sunday, Hengameh Ghaziani wrote, “whatever happens, know that as always I will stand with the people of Iran. This may be my last post,” she wrote. Katayoun Riahi was also arrested and accused of acting against Iran’s authorities.

    CNN reports Iran’s security forces are using sexual assaults of male and female activists to quell the protests.

    This week, the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva is set to hold a session on the protests with witnesses and victims in attendance and will discuss a proposal to establish a fact-finding mission on the crackdown in Iran. Evidence of abuses could later be used in court.

    For more, we’re joined by Nahid Siamdoust, assistant professor in Middle East and media studies at University of Texas in Austin, former journalist who has reported across the Middle East, including Iran.

    Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Professor. If you could start off by talking about the critical situation in Iran right now and also the escalating attacks by the Iranian government on Kurdish areas?

    NAHID SIAMDOUST: Yes. In recent weeks, we’ve seen, especially within the Kurdish areas, Mahabad most recently, but Bukan, Sanandaj, Saqqez, in all these cities, the Kurdish people have risen up. And the people have risen up all over Iran. And the authorities are going very harshly against protesters. We see photo after photo on social media of people with, you know, tens, sometimes hundreds, of pellets in their bodies. Some of these people do not survive those shots.

    And as you already mentioned in your report, many of the people, of the protesters who are killed, are children. They’re teenagers. They’re teenagers who have taken their lives into their hands and gone into the streets to protest their living conditions, you know, the bleak future that they’re looking into, and really asking for a different future.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: And could you explain specifically what is it, the relationship between Iran’s central government and Kurdistan? So many of the protests, as you’ve pointed out, too, the epicenter has been in the Kurdish region. Could you explain what the relationship between the state, following the revolution, and Kurdistan has been?

    NAHID SIAMDOUST: Sure. So, Kurdistan — Iran is a system of governorates, so 30 governorates and states, so to speak. And so, each state, including the Kurdish region, will have their own governors. So, the central system controls these regions via the governors that they have in these areas, and they’re oftentimes — you know, they’re always approved, of course, by the central state.

    But the people have risen up, and their religious leaders and sheikhs have spoken up in their defense. So, you know, we’ve seen one of the sheikhs in Kurdistan joining the sheikh in Balochistan in asking for an independent international body to oversee a referendum in Iran.

    And so, you know, the forces that we see, the sepahis that we see, the plainclothes officers and militia that we see in Kurdistan suppressing the uprising or the revolution there, they come from all kinds of different backgrounds, all supported by the central state, of course. And Kurdistan is very much, you know, part of Iran, and this is something that the Kurdish leaders in that region have also stated. So, you know, we have to be — when you talk about the central state and the Kurdish region, we have to be careful not to play into the regime’s own discourse of this being a separatist movement.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: No, absolutely, you’re right about that. And I wanted to say also — if you could comment, in addition, to the reports that we are seeing now, and that we said a bit in our introduction, of the systematic use of sexual violence against prisoners, principally women protesters but also men? What are you hearing about this on the ground? There have been reports, widely publicized, of attacks by security forces in public, but this is the first that we’re hearing of attacks on prisoners, protesters who have been imprisoned.

    NAHID SIAMDOUST: Right. So, a couple of weeks ago, there was a video published of a woman sort of open in public being, you know, sort of touched absolutely inappropriately, and that set off conversations about what is actually happening in terms of the sexual abuse of these prisoners. And more recently, a couple days ago, there was a report by CNN with, you know, sort of women and others alleging that they’ve been sexually abused in these interrogation rooms. And we’ve seen other reports coming through on social media.

    The parents and the families of these detainees are very much pressured to keep silent, and so we don’t really have a full account of what is happening in these interrogations. And we know they are abused physically, but the nature of the sexual abuse is something that still needs to really be narrated and come to the fore.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the defiance of the Iranian people, the women who are leading these protests, and the significance of what’s happening right now in Qatar with the Iranian soccer team refusing to sing the national anthem of Iran before the game?

    NAHID SIAMDOUST: Right. We’ve seen, you know, Iranians across the board, all over the nation. As you mentioned, people in 25 out of 30 states have been — have been killed. And so, this is really a nationwide revolution. And the defiance has been astounding. The courage with which people have gone into the streets week after week, despite the killings that are happening, despite the, you know, also severe injuries — it doesn’t just have to be deaths — people losing their eyes, people losing their limbs — despite all of that, they’ve risen up and are continuing to protest. And now they’ve been joined, as you mentioned in your report, by actresses, by athletes, by teachers’ unions and professors’ unions and so on.

    The Iran national team at the World Cup refused to sing the national anthem. However, they have not been fully supported by Iranians at large. It’s a very contested field. There are some among Iranians who are supporting their national team, but there are many who are not, because the national team had a visit with the conservative president, Ebrahim Raisi, right before their departure, and Iranians did not like to see their national team sort of bowing and being friendly with a president whom they see as being at the head of, you know, the repressive government — not the state, that would be the supreme leader, but leading the charge against women, not least because since he took office, he promised to bring morality to the streets. And this wave of protests that we see was not least caused by a year long of the morality police sort of upping the ante against women in public spaces. And so, the national team meeting the president did not sit well with many Iranians. And, you know, they had a historical defeat at the World Cup, losing to England.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Professor Siamdoust, you, among others, have pointed out, of course, that there have been many protests in recent years in Iran, starting, of course, with the 2009 protest, which is the time that we spoke to you on Democracy Now! But there is something, as you’ve said, qualitatively different about the protests that are now ongoing. Could you talk about what those differences are and how you see this playing out? Do you think, despite the brutality of the state response, that these protests will go on?

    NAHID SIAMDOUST: Right. In 2009, which was the biggest protest movement since the 1979 revolution, we saw masses of people coming into the streets. You know, in one of the biggest, there was perhaps 2 or 3 million people at once. But the nature of the slogans was still very much about reforming the system from within. We saw people engaging with the Islamic discourse of the government — right? — going to their rooftops and calling “Allahu akbar,” calling God to sort of bring forth that kind of Islamic morality and decency, to bring the government into a motion of reforms.

    That is no longer the case. The revolution that we see now — and there’s a lot of contestation around language, as well. There are people who say we should no longer be calling this an “uprising,” this should definitely be called a “revolution.” It’s not just a matter of semantics, I think.

    In the nature of the slogans that we see, this movement is no longer at all engaging with government discourse. There’s no reference whatsoever to Islamic, you know, sort of slogans or phrases that people had been using and the government itself had been using. People are calling for a new system. In the 2009 Green Uprising, for example, people would band together and say, “Natarsin, natarsin, ma hameh ba ham hastim!,” “Don’t be afraid. We’re all together.” And now it’s kind of filtered down to people saying, “Betarsid, betarsid, ma hameh ba ham hastim!,” “You should be afraid. You should be afraid, because we are altogether.”

    And then, when we look at the slogans, you know, the harshness of it, sort of there’s — all notion of Persian politeness or any sense of respect for authority or any of that is completely out the window. And we see this in the cuss words that are used against the supreme leader, against the Sepah. They’re ferocious. The slogans are ferocious. The movement is ferocious.

    And it’s of a different nature, because, you know, this movement is leaderless. And so, there are groups of people all across Iran popping up here and there, but there are no leaders to be put down. So the regime can’t, just like in 2009, go after the leaders of the movement and try to quell the movement through its leaders. It’s a leaderless movement. It’s a very smart movement that is sort of coming together and dissolving, and really sort of playing this strategic game, a very sort of organic strategic game against the forces.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Thank you so much, Professor Nahid Siamdoust, assistant professor in Middle East and media studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She’s a former journalist who has reported across the Middle East, including in Iran.

  • Chomsky: US Sanctions on Iran Don’t Support the Protests, They Deepen Suffering

    Protests have been raging in Iran since mid-September in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in a hospital in Tehran after being arrested a few days earlier by Iran’s morality police for allegedly breaching the Islamic theocratic regime’s dress code for women. Protesters are widely describing her death as murder perpetrated by the police (the suspicion is that she died from blows to the body), but Iran’s Forensic Organization has denied that account in an official medical report.

    Since September, the protests — led by women of all ages in defiance not only of the mandatory dress codes but also against gender violence and state violence of all kinds — have spread to at least 50 cities and towns. Just this week, prominent actors and sports teams have joined the burgeoning protest movement, which is reaching into all sectors of Iranian society.

    Women in Iran have a long history of fighting for their rights. They were at the forefront of the 1979 revolution that led to the fall of the Pahlavi regime, though they enjoyed far more liberties under the Shah than they would after the Ayatollah Khomeini took over. As part of Khomeini’s mission to establish an Islamic theocracy, it was decreed immediately after the new regime was put in place that women were henceforth mandated to wear the veil in government offices. Iranian women organized massive demonstrations when they heard that the new government would enforce mandatory veiling. But the theocratic regime that replaced the Shah was determined to quash women’s autonomy. “In 1983, Parliament decided that women who do not cover their hair in public will be punished with 74 lashes,” the media outlet Deutsche Welle reports. “Since 1995, unveiled women can also be imprisoned for up to 60 days.”

    But today’s protests are a display of opposition not just to certain laws but to the entire theocratic system in Iran: As Frieda Afary reported for Truthout, protesters have chanted that they want “neither monarchy, nor clergy.” And as Sima Shakhsari writes, the protests are also about domestic economic policies whose effects have been compounded by U.S. sanctions.

    The protests have engulfed much of the country and are now supported by workers across industries, professionals like doctors and lawyers, artists and shopkeepers. In response, the regime is intensifying its violent crackdown on protesters and scores of artists, filmmakers and journalists have been arrested or banned from work over their support for the anti-government protests.

    Is this a revolution in the making? Noam Chomsky sheds insight on this question and more in the exclusive interview below. Chomsky is institute professor emeritus in the department of linguistics and philosophy at MIT and laureate professor of linguistics and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona. One of the world’s most-cited scholars and a public intellectual regarded by millions of people as a national and international treasure, Chomsky has published more than 150 books in linguistics, political and social thought, political economy, media studies, U.S. foreign policy and world affairs. His latest books are The Secrets of Words (with Andrea Moro; MIT Press, 2022); The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power (with Vijay Prashad; The New Press, 2022); and The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (with C.J. Polychroniou; Haymarket Books, 2021).

    C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, Iranian women started these protests over the government’s Islamic policies, especially those around dress codes, but the protests seem now to be about overall reform failures on the part of the regime. The state of the economy, which is in a downward spiral, also seems to be one of the forces sending people into the streets with demands for change. In fact, teachers, shopkeepers and workers across industries have engaged in sit-down strikes and walkouts, respectively, amid the ongoing protests. Moreover, there seems to be unity between different ethnic subgroups that share public anger over the regime, which may be the first time that this has happened since the rise of the Islamic Republic. Does this description of what’s happening in Iran in connection with the protests sound fairly accurate to you? If so, is it also valid to speak of a revolution in the making?

    Noam Chomsky: It sounds accurate to me, though it may go too far in speaking of a revolution in the making.

    What’s happening is quite remarkable, in scale and intensity and particularly in the courage and defiance in the face of brutal repression. It is also remarkable in the prominent leadership role of women, particularly young women.

    The term “leadership” may be misleading. The uprising seems to be leaderless, also without clearly articulated broader goals or platform apart from overthrowing a hated regime. On that matter words of caution are in order. We have very little information about public opinion in Iran, particularly about attitudes in the rural areas, where support for the clerical regime and its authoritarian practice may be much stronger.

    Regime repression has been much harsher in the areas of Iran populated by Kurdish and Baluchi ethnic minorities. It’s generally recognized that much will depend on how Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will react. Those familiar with his record anticipate that his reaction will be colored by his own experience in the resistance that overthrew the Shah in 1979. He may well share the view of U.S. and Israeli hawks that if the Shah had been more forceful, and had not vacillated, he could have suppressed the protests by violence. Israel’s de facto Ambassador to Iran, Uri Lubrani, expressed their attitude clearly at the time: “I very strongly believe that Tehran can be taken over by a very relatively small force, determined, ruthless, cruel. I mean the men who would lead that force will have to be emotionally geared to the possibility that they’d have to kill ten thousand people.”

    Similar views were expressed by former CIA director Richard Helms, Carter high Pentagon official Robert Komer, and other hard-liners. It is speculated that Khamenei will adopt a similar stance, ordering considerably more violent repression if the protests proceed.

    As to the effects, we can only speculate with little confidence.

    In the West, the protests are widely interpreted as part of a continuous struggle for a secular, democratic Iran but with complete omission of the fact that the current revolutionary forces in Iran are opposing not only the reactionary government in Tehran but also neoliberal capitalism and the hegemony of the U.S. The Iranian government, on the other hand, which is using brutal tactics to disperse demonstrations across the country, is blaming the protests on “foreign hands.” To what extent should we expect to see interaction of foreign powers with domestic forces in Iran? After all, such interaction played a major role in the shaping and fate of the protests that erupted in the Arab world in 2010 and 2011.

    There can hardly be any doubt that the U.S. will provide support for efforts to undermine the regime, which has been a prime enemy since 1979, when the U.S.-backed tyrant who was re-installed by the U.S. by a military coup in 1953 was overthrown in a popular uprising. The U.S. at once gave strong support to its then-friend Saddam Hussein in his murderous assault against Iran, finally intervening directly to ensure Iran’s virtual capitulation, an experience not forgotten by Iranians, surely not by the ruling powers.

    When the war ended, the U.S. imposed harsh sanctions on Iran. President Bush I — the statesman Bush — invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the U.S. for advanced training in nuclear weapons development and sent a high-level delegation to assure Saddam of Washington’s strong support for him. All very serious threats to Iran.

    Punishment of Iran has continued since and remains bipartisan policy, with little public debate. Britain, Iran’s traditional torturer before the U.S. displaced it in the 1953 coup that overthrew Iranian democracy, is likely, as usual, to trail obediently behind the U.S., perhaps other allies. Israel surely will do what it can to overthrow its archenemy since 1979 — previously a close ally under the Shah, though the intimate relations were clandestine.

    Both the U.S. and the European Union imposed new sanctions on Iran over the crackdown on protests. Haven’t sanctions against Iran been counterproductive? In fact, don’t sanctioned regimes tend to become more authoritarian and repressive, with ordinary people being hurt much more than those in power?

    We always have to ask: Counterproductive for whom? Sanctions do typically have the effect you describe and would be “counterproductive” if the announced goals — always noble and humane — had anything to do with the real ones. That’s rarely the case.

    The sanctions have severely harmed the Iranian economy, incidentally causing enormous suffering. But that has been the U.S. goal for over 40 years. For Europe it’s a different matter. European business sees Iran as an opportunity for investment, trade and resource extraction, all blocked by the U.S. policy of crushing Iran.

    The same in fact is true of corporate America. This is one of the rare and instructive cases — Cuba is another — where the short-term interests of the owners of the society are not “most peculiarly attended to” by the government they largely control (to borrow Adam Smith’s term for the usual practice). The government, in this case, pursues broader class interests, not tolerating “dangerous” independence of its will. That’s an important matter, which, in the case of Iran, goes back in some respects to Washington’s early interest in Iran in 1953. And in the case of Cuba goes back to its liberation in 1959.

    One final question: What impact could the protests have across the Middle East?

    It depends very much on the outcome, still up in the air. I don’t see much reason to expect a major effect, whatever the outcome. Shiite Iran is quite isolated in the largely Sunni region. The Sunni dictatorships of the Gulf are slightly mending fences with Iran, much to the displeasure of Washington, but they are hardly likely to be concerned with brutal repression, their own way of life.

    A successful popular revolution would doubtless concern them and might “spread contagion,” as Kissingerian rhetoric puts it. But that remains too remote a contingency for now to allow much useful speculation.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • UN Human Rights Council holds special session on Iran on 24 November

    Iranian demonstrators in the streets of the capital, Tehran.
    Iranian demonstrators in the streets of the capital, Tehran, during a September 21, 2022 protest for Mahsa Amini, days after she died in police custody.  © 2022 AFP via Getty Images

    Just before the United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session on ongoing human rights violations in Iran on 24 November, Human Rights Watch urge it to establish an independent fact-finding mission to investigate Iran’s deadly crackdown on widespread protests as a first step toward accountability, Human Rights Watch said today.

    The demonstrations began on September 16, 2022, following the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, in the custody of the “morality police.” As of November 22, human rights groups are investigating the deaths of 434 people including 60 children. Human Rights Watch has documented a pattern of Iranian authorities using excessive and unlawful lethal force against protesters in dozens of instances in several cities including Sanandaj, Saghez, Mahabad, Rasht, Amol, Shiraz, Mashhad, and Zahedan.

    “Iranian authorities seem determined to unleash brutal force to crush protests and have ignored calls to investigate the mountains of evidence of serious rights violations,” said Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The UN Human Rights Council should shine a spotlight on the deepening repression and create an independent mechanism to investigate Iranian government abuses and hold those responsible accountable.”

    Since mid-November, Iranian authorities have dramatically escalated their crackdown against protests in several Kurdish cities, with at least 39 people killed, according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network. The group reported that from November 15 to 18, at least 25 Kurdish-Iranian residents were killed in Kurdish cities during three days of protests and strikes to commemorate the victims of the government’s bloody crackdown on protests in November 2019.

    The authorities have pressured families of recent victims to bury their loved ones without public gatherings, but several funerals have become the scene of new protests. The group said that at least 14 people were killed in Javanrood, Piranshahr, Sanandaj, Dehgan, and Bookan from November 19 to 21, 2022. Radio Zamaneh said the victims included Ghader Shakri, 16, killed in Piranshahr on November 19, and Bahaedin Veisi, 16, killed in Javanrood on November 20.

    A 32-year-old Sanandaj resident told Human Rights Watch that the security forces fatally shot Shaho Bahmani and Aram Rahimi on November 17 and forcibly removed their bodies from the Kowsar Hospital in Sanandaj, and threatened the two men’s families outside the hospital.

    Jalal Mahmoudzadeh, a parliament member from Mahabad, told Shargh Daily on November 21 that between October 27 and 29, security forces killed seven protesters in the city Mahabad. Mahmoudzadeh said security forces also damaged people’s houses; one woman was killed in her home outside of the protests. He said that since then, another man had been killed, and three more had been shot and killed during his funeral, bringing the total number killed in Mahabad, since October 27, to 11.

    Videos circulated on social media show that authorities have deployed special forces and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps units armed with military assault rifles, vehicle-mounted DShK 12.7mm heavy machine guns, and armored vehicles.

    On October 24, Masoud Setayeshi, the judiciary spokesperson, told media that authorities have started prosecuting thousands of protesters. These trials, which are often publicized through state media, fall grossly short of international human rights standards, with courts regularly using coerced confessions and defendants not having access to the lawyer of their choice. As of November 21, trial courts have handed down death sentences to at least six protesters on the charges of corruption on earth and enmity against God. The acts judicial authorities have cited to bring charges against the defendants, including “incineration of a government building” or “using a “cold weapon” to “spread terror among the public.” Amnesty International said that at least 21 people are facing charges in connection to the protests that can carry the death penalty.

    Since the protests began in September, the authorities have arrested thousands of people during protests as well as hundreds of students, human rights defenders, journalists, and lawyers outside the protests. Detainees are kept in overcrowded settings and are subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including sexual harassment, Human Rights Watch said.

    Two women who were arrested during the first week of protests in Sanandaj told Human Rights Watch that the authorities brutally beat them, sexually harassed them, and threatened them during their arrests and later while they were detained at a police station. One of these women said she had several severe injuries, including internal bleeding and fractures.

    Over the past four years, Iran has experienced several waves of widespread protests. Authorities have responded with excessive and unlawful lethal force and the arbitrary arrests of thousands of protesters. In one of the most brutal crackdowns, in November 2019, security forces used unlawful force against massive protests across the country, killing at least 321 people. Iranian authorities have failed to conduct any credible and transparent investigations into the security forces’ serious abuses over the past years.

    Iranian authorities have also used partial or total internet shutdowns during widespread protests to restrict access to information and prohibit dissemination of information, in particular videos of the protests, Human Rights Watch said. They have blocked several social media platforms, including WhatsApp messaging application and Instagram, since September 21, 2022, by an order of Iran’s National Security Council.

    “On November 24, UN Human Rights Council members should vote to establish an independent mechanism to document serious human rights violations in Iran and advance on the path to accountability,” Sepehri Far said.

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/11/23/iran-un-rights-council-should-create-fact-finding-mission

    5 Things You Need to Know About Protests Prompted by Mahsa Amini’s Death

    https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1128111

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/12/iran-pushes-back-against-protests-scrutiny-at-un

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Iran enters ‘critical’ phase as it tries to quash anti-regime protests

    Activists accuse state forces of deploying heavy weaponry, as attacks on Kurdish areas intensify

    Iran’s repression of anti-regime protests appears to have entered a dangerous new phase, with activists accusing state forces of deploying heavy weapons and helicopters and a UN official describing the situation as “critical”.

    A nationwide uprising has convulsed the country since the death in September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was allegedly beaten into a coma by the Islamic Republic’s “morality police” after they arrested her for wearing a headscarf they deemed inappropriate.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Cowards England won’t wear armbands while Iran’s captain risks arrest

    England captain Harry Kane did not wear One Love armbands during their opening match. Meanwhile, Iran’s team captain Ehsan Hajsafi spoke out defiantly against his own state, potentially risking arrest. Spot the difference?

    Iran: 21 people facing the death penalty for protesting

    As the Canary previously reported, Iran has been shaken by over two months of protests sparked by the death of Kurdish-Iranian woman Jîna Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest for allegedly breaching the strict dress code for women. Agence France-Presse (AFP) noted that the Iranian state could sentence 21 people to death over the protests. Amnesty International says Iran put at least 314 people to death in 2021. Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) says the number of executions this year is already much higher, at 482 people.

    Campaigners warn that not only do the authorities plan to execute protesters on vague charges linked to alleged rioting or attacks on security forces during the demonstrations, but also step up hangings not related to the protest movement, notably of prisoners convicted on drug-related charges. Amnesty said the authorities’ pursuit of the death penalty is:

    designed to intimidate those participating in the popular uprising… and deter others from joining the movement.

    The strategy aims to “instil fear among the public”, it added, condemning a “chilling escalation in the use of the death penalty as a tool of political repression and the systematic violation of fair trial rights in Iran”. However, as well as people protesting inside Iran, World Cup players and staff of the Iranian team are also taking a stand.

    ‘We have to fight’

    SBS News reported Hajsafi said in a press conference:

    We have to accept the conditions in our country are not right and our people are not happy…

    We are here but it does not mean we should not be their voice or we must not respect them.

    He continued:

    Whatever we have is from them. We have to fight. We have to perform and score some goals to present the brave people of Iran with a result. I hope conditions change as to the expectations of the people.

    Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted his solidarity with Hajsafi, noting the captain also mentioned bereaved Iranian families:

    Hajsafi is not the only Iranian public figure to have recently taken a stand against the state. As Al Jazeera reported:

    Karim Bagheri and Yahya Golmohammadi, two former players for the national football team and current members of the backroom staff at the leading Iranian club Persepolis, were punished on Sunday for publishing posts in support of the protests on their social media accounts. Bagheri was fined 20 percent of his salary, while Golmohammadi was fined 15 percent.

    Two actresses, Katayoun Riahi and Hengameh Ghaziani, were also arrested on Sunday. They had filmed themselves without a head covering in support of the protests.

    England ‘cowardice’

    Meanwhile, Kane and the rest of the England team couldn’t bring themselves to wear a rainbow armband in case they got yellow cards. BBC News reported that:

    England, Wales and other European nations will not wear the OneLove armband at the World Cup in Qatar because of the threat of players being booked. The captains, including England’s Harry Kane and Gareth Bale of Wales, had planned to wear the armband during matches to promote diversity and inclusion.

    A joint statement from seven football associations said they could not put their players “in a position where they could face sporting sanctions”.

    “We are very frustrated by the Fifa decision, which we believe is unprecedented”…

    As one Twitter user summed up about Iran and England:

    Moreover, England’s cowardice has wider implications. As the Canary reported, a gunman killed five people and wounded 25 others in an LGBTQIA+ hate crime in the US. So, as one person tweeted:

    And, as writer Jackson King said:

    The English Football Association (FA) could have backed the England team, but failed to. The corporate capture of football is such that players dare not push the limits of protest too far for fear of losing money or advantages in the tournament. However, as the director of IHR Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam told the World Congress against the Death Penalty in Berlin recently:

    Unless the international community sends a very, very strong signal to the Islamic republic authorities, we will be facing mass executions.

    Clearly for the Three Lions, international solidarity with ordinary people comes a lowly second to their own careers – unlike Iran’s team.

    Featured image via WION – YouTube, Guardian Football – YouTube and Beanyman News – YouTube – background overlayed with separate images of the England captain and the Iran captain

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Protest-hit Iran strikes Kurdish groups in Iraq again

    Iran again launched deadly missile and drone strikes overnight to Monday against Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraq. One Kurdish peshmerga fighter was reported killed in mountainous northern Iraq, where two of the groups said their bases had been targeted in the latest such barrage of aerial attacks in recent months.

    ‘Indiscriminate attacks’

    Iran has been shaken by over two months of protests sparked by the death of Kurdish-Iranian woman Jîna Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest for allegedly breaching the strict dress code for women.
    Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has repeatedly struck Kurdish dissident groups based in Iraq, whom it labels “separatist anti-Iranian terrorist groups”. One of the groups, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), said it was hit with missiles and suicide drones in Koya and Jejnikan, near Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Party official Ali Boudaghi said:

    A member of the peshmerga was killed in an Iranian strike.

    The PDKI, the oldest Kurdish party in Iran said:

    These indiscriminate attacks are occurring at a time when the terrorist regime of Iran is unable to stop the ongoing demonstrations in (Iranian) Kurdistan.

    The Iranian Kurdish nationalist group Komala said it was also targeted. On Twitter it said:

    Our HQ was once again attacked by the Islamic regime tonight. We’ve been carefully prepared for these types of attacks & have no losses for the moment.

    The autonomous Kurdistan region’s government condemned the strikes in a statement, saying:

    The repeated violations that undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and the Kurdistan region are unjustifiable.

    ‘Vulnerable to attacks’

    Since the 1980s, Iraqi Kurdistan has hosted several Iranian Kurdish opposition groups which have waged an armed insurrection against Tehran in the past.

    In recent years their activities have declined, but the new wave of protests in Iran has again stoked tensions.

    Rights groups on Monday accused Iranian security forces of using live fire and heavy weapons to suppress protests in Kurdish-populated regions in Iran’s west, intensifying a deadly crackdown.

    Iran’s latest cross-border strikes come less than a week after similar attacks that killed at least one person, and following attacks in late September that killed more than a dozen people.

    The Iranian attacks also come a day after Turkey carried out air raids against outlawed Kurdish militants in Iraqi Kurdistan and northern Syria.

    The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has fought the Turkish government since the mid-1980s and has long operated rear bases in northern Iraq.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Agreen

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Iran forces shoot dead three protesters in Mahsa Amini’s home province

    Rights group says forces opened fire on protesters in town of Divandarreh in western province of Kurdistan

    Iranian security forces have shot dead at least three people in the western province of Kurdistan in the latest deadly protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a rights group said.

    The country’s clerical leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is facing its biggest challenge since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, in two months of violent demonstrations after Amini’s death in custody on 16 September.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Euthanizing The Poor Is Just Capitalism’s True Face: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    We’re at the most dangerous point in humanity’s abusive relationship with US unipolar domination, for the same reason the most dangerous point in a battered wife’s life is right when she’s trying to escape. The empire is willing to do terrible and risky things to retain control.

    “If I can’t have you no one can” is a line that can be said to a wife or to the world.

    ❖

    Nobody likes feeling like they’re part of the problem. The reality that the US is the most tyrannical, murderous and belligerent government on earth causes people discomfort for the same reason they don’t like thinking about factory farming or their own socioeconomic privilege.

    ❖

    Canada: We’re euthanizing people now.

    Conservatives: EVIL! SATAN!

    Canada: *Poor people.

    Conservatives: We’re listening…

    Euthanizing the poor is just capitalism finally being honest about itself. After all these years of falsely pretending to have real solutions to the problems it creates, it finally presents a solution entirely in alignment with its values that actually works.

    Capitalism’s answer to “What about the poor?” has always been “They should work harder,” and its answer to “What about those who can’t work?” has always been “They should die quickly.” But until now it’s always been spoken wordlessly in the policies enacted and the societal structures put in place. Now it’s just right there, completely undisguised. It’s refreshingly honest.

    ❖

    Landlords don’t “provide housing”, they restrict housing. The housing already exists; landlords just make it much harder for the people who need it to access it.

    ❖

    Why is AP continuing to protect the anonymity of the US official who fed them a fake story about Russia attacking Poland? This is a very important question that demands serious answers. If government officials know they can get brazen lies anonymously published in the press and still have their anonymity protected after those lies are exposed, they will with 100% certainty continue to do so. Why wouldn’t they? There are no consequences.

    It’s obnoxious and unacceptable that the mass media currently hold random social media users to higher levels of accountability than powerful government officials who circulate lies that can start wars.

    ❖

    Western politicians, pundits and celebrities circulating the false claim that Iran sentenced 15,000 protesters to death is a good example of the way fact checking and journalistic responsibility go out the window when it’s a claim about a government the US empire wants to remove. It’s also a good illustration of the point Glenn Greenwald is always repeating that the largest and most egregious purveyors of misinformation in the western world are not Russian trolls or conspiracy theorists but the mainstream western political/media class.

    ❖

    Again, the most important thing for a westerner to understand about Iran is that it’s none of your fucking business. The less western “help” Iranians are getting, the better it is for Iranians. Demands that you “support the Iranian people” are only ever made in bad faith. No material benefits come from you tweeting “yay Iranian protesters” with the relevant hashtags. All that happens is you draw more western attention to Iran, along with the support for interventionism that inevitably comes with it.

    ❖

    Advocating peace and criticizing Nazis to trigger the libs.

    ❖

    It is good that the idea of peace talks with Russia is gaining more mainstream support. It should have had full support from the beginning. It’s only due to propaganda that opposing endless escalations between nuclear superpowers isn’t the most mainstream normie position ever.

    ❖

    Probably goes without saying but anyone who believes Trump would be meaningfully better than Biden on any issue that matters didn’t pay attention when he was president.

    ❖

    I’m not a multipolarist, I’m an omnipolarist — I think everyone on earth should have an equal amount of power. I want 8 billion equal poles. Multipolarity is just the practical lesser evil to unipolarity, because it turns out unipolarity requires constant war and nuclear brinkmanship to maintain.

    People say multipolarity necessarily requires wars as well, but that’s not true. There’s no reason powers like China and the US can’t get along and collaborate in everyone’s interest. The only thing stopping that is the US empire’s desire to keep chasing total unipolar planetary domination.

    I’m always reluctant to commit to other people’s -ists and -isms, but I’m definitely big on omnipolarism and information anarchism.

    _____________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Rights groups raise alarm as Iranians protest against regime at child’s funeral

    On 18 November, protesters in Iran chanted anti-regime slogans at the funeral of a young boy whose family say was killed by security forces.

    Hundreds flocked to the city of Izeh in southwestern Iran for the funeral of 9-year-old Kian Pirfalak. Footage posted by the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and monitor group 1500tasvir has showed as much.

    Family speaks out

    His mother told the funeral ceremony that Kian was shot on Wednesday by the security forces. However, Iranian officials have insisted he was killed in a “terrorist” attack carried out by an extremist group.

    According to a video posted by 1500tasvir, Kian’s mother said:

    Hear it from me myself on how the shooting happened, so they can’t say it was by terrorists because they’re lying.

    Maybe they thought we wanted to shoot or something and they peppered the car with bullets… Plain clothes forces shot my child. That is it.

    Ridiculing the official version of events, the protesters chanted: “Basij, Sepah – you are our ISIS!” according to a video posted by IHR. The Basij is a pro-government paramilitary force. ‘Sepah’ is another name for Iran’s feared Revolutionary Guards. ‘ISIS’ is an alternative name for the extremist Islamic State (IS) group.

    “Death to Khamenei,” they shouted in another video posted by 1500tasvir, referring to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    Funerals becoming flashpoints

    Opposition media based outside of Iran said that another minor, 14-year-old Sepehr Maghsoudi, was also shot dead in similar circumstances in Izeh on Wednesday 16 November.

    Funerals have repeatedly become flashpoints for protests in the movement that started after the 16 September death of Mahsa Amini. Mahsa had been arrested by the Tehran morality police.

    Hadi Ghaemi, director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said:

    Kian Pirfalak, nine, and Sepehr Maghsoudi, 14, are among at least 56 kids killed by Iranian forces working to crush Iran’s 2022 Revolution.

    IHR also said that anti-regime slogans were chanted at the funeral of Aylar Haghi in the northern city of Tabriz. Haghi was a young medical student whom the activists say was killed in a fall from a building. The fall was blamed on the security forces.

    Severe concern

    A number of human rights groups have expressed extreme concern at the treatment of protestors. Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch reported that they had:

    documented security forces’ unlawful use of excessive or lethal force including shotguns, assault rifles, and handguns against protesters in largely peaceful and often crowded settings in 13 cities across the country.

    The United Nations Human Rights Council urged Iran to stop giving protesters death sentences:

    UN experts today urged Iranian authorities to stop indicting people with charges punishable by death for participation, or alleged participation, in peaceful demonstrations.

    They further specified:

    On 6 November, in blatant violation of the separation of powers, 227 members of Parliament called on the judiciary to act decisively against people arrested during the protests and to carry out punishment carrying the death penalty.

    IHR urged swift action:

    The community of states have a moral obligation to stand with the people of Iran and not to remain silent in the face of such blatant violations of fundamental human rights and crimes under international law.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/The Independent

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Video: Kurdistan National Congress’ Nilüfer Koç answers questions on Ukraine, Iran and Rojava

    Nilüfer Koç, spokesperson for the Commission on Foreign Relations of the Kurdistan National Congress, spoke at the Brisbane session of Ecosocialism 2022. In the Q&A after her presentation, she answered questions on Ukraine, Iran and Rojava.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Journalistic Responsibility Vanishes When Reporting On US-Targeted Nations

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    Two false news reports have gone viral in recent hours due to sloppy sourcing and journalistic malpractice. As usual they both featured bogus claims about US-targeted nations, in this case Russia and Iran.

    An article in Responsible Statecraft titled “How a lightly-sourced AP story almost set off World War III” details how the propaganda multiplier news agency published a one-source, one-sentence report claiming that Russia had launched a deadly missile strike at NATO member Poland, despite evidence having already come to light by that point that the missile had probably come from Ukraine. This set off calls for the implementation of a NATO Article 5 response, meaning hot warfare between NATO and Russia in retaliation for a Russian attack on one of the alliance members.

    Mainstream news reports circulated the narrative that Poland had been struck by a “Russian-made” missile, which is at best a highly misleading framing of the fact that the inadvertent strike came from a Soviet-era surface-to-air missile system still used by Ukraine, a former Soviet state. Headlines from the largest and most influential US news outlets like The New York Times, CNN and NBC all repeated the misleading “Russian-made” framing, as did AP’s own correction to its false report that Poland was struck by Russia.

    All current evidence indicates that Poland was accidentally hit by one of those missiles while Ukraine was defending itself from Russian missile strikes. President Biden has said it’s “unlikely” that the missile which killed two Poles came from Russia, while Polish president Andrzej Duda and NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg both said it looks like it was an accidental strike from Ukrainian air defenses. Russia says its own missile strikes have been no closer than 35 km from the Polish border.

    The only party still adamantly insisting that the strike did come from Russia is Ukraine, leading an exasperated diplomat from a NATO country to anonymously tell Financial Times: “This is getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”

    It is very sleazy for AP to continue to protect the anonymity of the US official who fed them a lie of such immense significance and potential consequence. They should tell the world who it was who initiated that lie so we can demand explanations and accountability.

    Another false story that went extremely viral was one that Newsweek has been forced to extensively revise and correct that was initially titled “Iran Votes to Execute Protesters, Says Rebels Need ‘Hard Lesson’,” but is now titled “Iran Parliament Chants ‘Death to Seditionists’ in Protest Punishment Call.” The latest correction notice now reads, “This article and headline were updated to remove the reference to the Iranian Parliament voting for death sentences. A majority of the parliament supported a letter to the judiciary calling for harsh punishments of protesters, which could include the death penalty.”

    Moon of Alabama explains how the Newsweek piece was the springboard that launched the viral false claim that the Iranian government had just sentenced 15,000 protesters to death, which was circulated by countless politicians, pundits and celebrities throughout social media. This claim has been debunked by mainstream outlets like NBC News, who explains that “There has been no evidence that 15,000 protesters have been sentenced to death. Two protesters had been sentenced to death as of Tuesday, although they can appeal, according to state news agencies.”

    An article by The Cradle titled “Fact check – Iran has not sentenced ‘15,000’ protesters to death” explains that the Iranian parliament actually just signed a letter urging the Iranian judiciary to issue harsher sentences upon protesters who’ve been demonstrating against Tehran. Those sentences can include the death penalty as noted above, but up to this point have more often entailed prison sentences of five to ten years.

    The Cradle also notes that even the “15,000” figure is suspect, as its sole source is an American organization funded by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy:

    Further muddying the waters, the figure of 15,000 protesters detained by Iranian authorities originates from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).

    US-based HRANA is the media arm of the Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI), a group that receives funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – a CIA soft power front that has for decades funded regime-change efforts across the globe.

    Indeed, it’s public knowledge that NED is funded directly by the US government, and that according to its own cofounder was set up to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly. It’s possible that the 15,000 figure could be more or less accurate, and it’s possible that a great many more Iranian protesters will be sentenced to death for their actions, but reporting such possibilities as a currently established fact is plainly journalistic malpractice.

    In April of this year Newsweek published an article titled “Russians Raped 11-Year-Old Boy, Forced Mom to Watch: Ukraine Official.” In May of this year Newsweek published an article titled “Ukraine Official Fired Over Handling of Russian Sexual Assault Claims.” It was the same official. Newsweek made no mention of the fact that its source for its sexual assault story had just been fired for disseminating unevidenced claims about sexual assault. To this day its April report contains no updates or corrections.

    Contrast this complete dereliction of journalistic responsibility with Newsweek’s extreme caution when one of its reporters tried to report on the OPCW scandal which disrupted the US government narrative about an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government. Reporter Tareq Haddad was forbidden by his superiors to write about the many leaks coming out exposing malfeasance in the Douma investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, on the basis that NED-funded Bellingcat had disputed the leaks and that other respectable outlets had not reported on them.

    Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has published numerous articles documenting what Adam Johnson calls the North Korea Law of Journalism, which holds that “editorial standards are inversely proportional to a country’s enemy status.” In other words, the more disfavorably a foreign government is viewed by the US empire, the lower the editorial standards for reporting claims about them. Because Russia and Iran are both viewed as enemies of Washington, western news media often feel comfortable just publishing any old claim about them as fact regardless of sourcing or evidence.

    We saw this highlighted during the insanity of Russiagate, where mainstream news outlet after mainstream news outlet was caught publishing unevidenced conspiratorial hogwash that it was often (though not even always) forced to retract. This was possible because when it comes to implicating Russia the evidentiary standards for reporting on something are much lower than they would be for implicating a government that is held in favor by the US.

    And this is the case because the western mainstream media are the propaganda services of the US-centralized empire. They do not exist to tell people the truth, they exist to manipulate the public into hating the official enemies of the empire and into consenting to foreign policy agendas that they would not otherwise consent to.

    Imperial propagandists lower their editorial standards when reporting on official enemies not because they are bad at their job, but because they are very good at their job. It’s just that their job isn’t what we’ve been told.

    ________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • The Iranian state has sentenced a protester to death. Meanwhile, women are planning a revolution

    The Iranian state has sentenced a protester to death for taking part in the nationwide protests against the killing of Jîna Mahsa Amini.

    Authorities have not yet named the man. They have accused him of:

    setting fire to the government building, disturbing public order, conspiracy to commit crimes against national security, enmity with God and causing corruption on earth.

    He is the first to be given the death sentence since the protests began. However, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) warn that at least 20 more people are at risk.

    A United Nations official has said that authorities have arrested 14,000 people since the protests began, and are charging at least 1,000 of them in the Tehran province alone. A similar number are also facing charges outside the capital. Iranian security forces have killed hundreds of people since the uprising began in September, including at least 43 children.

    Women at the forefront

    Meanwhile, many women in Iran are organising for change. In an interview with revolutionary podcast Çay at the Women’s Front, a young Kurdish woman named Ala said:

    We are witnessing a strange encouraging and hopeful phenomenon among the people. And that is the power of unity and hope, the force that has caused people not to stop fighting for even one day

    She explained the central place of women in the uprising:

    Women have the main and key role in this uprising, from the very beginning when they killed Jîna Mahsa Amini because of not having proper clothing in their opinion. Until now, women have not vacated the battlefield.

    “We will build a free life through the women’s revolution”

    The Eastern Kurdistan Women’s Community (KJAR) issued the following statement:

    We are living in the time of Freedom in Rojhilat [the name for the area of Kurdistan within Iran’s borders] Kurdistan, led by women. In the 21st century, we will build a free life through the women’s revolution. Here, Rojhilat and all Iranian women are now imposing a democratic Iran. This time, it should be us women and the peoples, not the hegemonic powers, that will determine how the new life will be.

    KRAR celebrated the fact that ‘Jin Jiyan, Azadi!’ (Women, Life, Freedom!), a slogan that has its origins in the Kurdish womens’ movement, is now known throughout the world:

    As we prepare to welcome another 25 November, we greet the day of combating violence against women with the universalizing of the JIN-JIYAN-AZADI philosophy. All women of the world come together around this slogan and get closer to each other. This is very exciting and hopeful. It is the password of resistance, the talisman of life and the identity of freedom, especially for women and peoples in Rojhilat Kurdistan and Iran.

    A plan for change

    KJAR has published a ten-point plan for a womens’ social revolution in Iran. The Canary is publishing it in full below:

    Building and developing democratic self-government is the guarantee of social revolution. On this basis, as KJAR, we present our project in 10 points to women, youth and the whole society in order to self-manage and protect the women’s revolution. We consider ourselves responsible for the practical application of these dimensions.

    1 – Political women prisoners and all political prisoners, starting with Zeynep Celaliyan, should be freed immediately.

    2- All nations and peoples should form committees under the leadership of women against a murderous system that develops enmity between peoples. They should develop democratic relations and alliances and establish a democratic administration.

    3- With the awareness that self-defense is a fundamental right, women, our people and young people can only make the stance of serhildan [uprising] permanent by organizing themselves with the awareness of self-defense.

    Self-defense is an indispensable right of society and women, because of special war policies developed against women and society. No neighbourhood should be without committees or units. Our people should be able to give the necessary punishment to the murderers, agents, rapists, torturers and officials in Iran and Rojhilat Kurdistan.

    4- Under the name of a judiciary committee, leaders of religion and belief, lawyers, who give confidence in society with the active participation of women, should develop their own judicial system and reject the judicial system of the Iranian regime. A democratic judicial system in accordance with social morals and values ​​should be developed.

    5- All artists, athletes, teachers, workers, doctors and environmental activists who have been fighting for democracy and freedom for years should form their own committees in this revolutionary process. In particular, women who lead in these fields should form their own committees in parallel, as they take part in the general committees for the protection of revolution, freedom and democracy.

    6- The demands of universities, which lead the rise of freedom every day and everywhere, are democratic questions. Teachers, students, intellectuals and academics should form education committees for the development of a free and democratic education. An alternative education system should be developed. It is necessary to organize all houses, streets and neighbourhoods in the form of an academy.

    7- All Rojhilat and Iranian women will be able to establish their communes, units, and shura [council] units everywhere and organize their own future and ensure their freedom.

    8- The family plays a leading role in protecting and developing the revolution. In this process, each family has an important role in strengthening the committees. In order to develop a free and new human being, it is necessary to strengthen the struggle with the democratic family principle.

    9- The state uses religion, belief and culture as a tool to divide peoples. The Iranian people should form religious, belief and culture committees against this and should respect each other’s sensitivities.

    10- Revolutionary community support committee. Due to the invading dominant system, and also due to the uprising and protest process in the squares, many revolutionaries, many families and societies are experiencing great economic difficulties. Organizing ourselves is crucial to providing vital needs with the help of original economic institutions and companies, led by all those who encourage the revolution, women and youth.

    As the uprising in Iran develops, people are likely to experience more and more brutal repression from the embattled Iranian state. We need to listen to the voices of those who are risking their lives for freedom, and be ready to support them.

    Featured image of a memorial for Jîna Mahsa Amini at a protest in Germany via Wikimedia Commons/Bernd Schwabe in Hannover (resized to 770x403px), Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Iran is at war with its own people. Fifa won’t let that spoil their World Cup

    By supplying military drones to Russia, the mullahs’ regime is killing at home and away. The national team’s presence in Qatar is sickening and shameful

    Some governments, such as Syria and Myanmar, kill their own people. Some, such as Russia, kill people in other countries, as in Ukraine. Iran’s government is doing both, home and away.

    Now, pressed into action by this murderous regime, Iran’s national football team is about to play England, Wales and the US in the 2022 World Cup – as if nothing untoward were happening. This is not OK. In truth, it’s shameful.

    Continue reading…

  • Thousands of Iranians protest in south-east to mark ‘Bloody Friday’

    Video apparently shows crowds marching in Zahedan to condemn 30 September massacre of activists

    Thousands of Iranians protested in the restive south-east to mark a 30 September crackdown by security forces known as “Bloody Friday” as the country’s rulers faced persistent nationwide unrest.

    Amnesty International said security forces unlawfully killed at least 66 people in September after firing at protesters in Zahedan, capital of flashpoint Sistan and Baluchistan province. Authorities said dissidents had provoked the clashes.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Ukrainian feminists: ‘We stand in solidarity with the Iranian uprising’

    Various Ukrainian feminist activist groups and NGOs have signed a statement expressing their solidarity with the Iranian uprising.

  • Iranians defy crackdown with fresh protests, as president dismisses US vow to ‘free Iran’

    Ebrahim Raisi declares streets ‘safe and sound’ while shopkeepers strike and student demonstrations sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death reach 50th day

    Iranian students protested and shopkeepers went on strike in the face of a widening crackdown, according to reports on social media, as demonstrations that flared over Mahsa Amini’s death continued for a 50th day.

    Saturday’s protests came as President Ebrahim Raisi said Iran’s cities were “safe and sound” after earlier dismissing a pledge from the US president, Joe Biden, to “free Iran”.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • A young woman participating in the uprising in Iran has sent a message to the world

    A young woman called Ala has sent a message to the world, from the heart of Iran’s people’s uprising.

    Ala spoke to the Çay at the Women’s Front podcast about the ongoing uprising in Iran, which erupted following the murder of Jîna Mahsa Amini on 16 September by the Iranian police. Jîna had been arrested for supposedly not wearing a proper hijab.

    Ala said:

    If anyone in Iran hears my voice, I tell them to close their wounds and continue until they reach freedom.
    And if someone outside of Iran hears my voice, I request you to be the voice of the Iranian people, because the Islamic Republic of Iran is trying to silence the voice of the Iranian people.
    Ala is a Kurdish woman from the city of Kirmaşan (or ‘Kermanshah’ in Persian). Kirmaşan is part of Rojhelat, the part of Kurdistan which lies within Iran’s borders.

    The Çay at the Women’s Front podcast is broadcast from Rojava Northeast Syria, and asks questions like “What problems do we face on the journey for a free life?” and “What do we learn from the young women and mothers who weave the change of society with their hands?”

    It published a twenty-minute message from Ala. You can hear the whole recording here.

    Oppression and injustice

    Ala explained the significance of the protests:

    During the years of my life in Iran I have always witnessed oppression and injustice to people, especially women. I have witnessed many protests, but the protests..of the last month are the longest protests that have taken place in the last 43 years.

    She continued, explaining the heavy repression of the movement:

    In the past month we have witnessed the killing of many people, including the old and the young – children, men and women. The phenomenon that we are facing is one of the most cruel confrontations, because it is clearly a violation of human rights. And they are trying to force any protesting person to remain silent, be it a child, be it a woman or a man.

    It can be forcing them to remain silent by arresting them or by killing them. They are cutting off the internet and other communications… And are trying to silence the voice of Iran’s struggles.

    The power of unity and hope

    Despite all of this, Ala said:

    We are witnessing a strange encouraging and hopeful phenomenon among the people. And that is the power of unity and hope, the force that has caused people not to stop fighting for even one day in the past month.

    Ala explained the many ways in which people are joining the struggle:

    Today all freedom loving people are political fighters, everyone in the way they can. One [way] is through face-to -face protest and participation in street protest, the other is through strikes and not going to work, the university student by not participating in classes, the school students by defying the singing of the national anthem.

    All people are on the battlefield with empty hands, but hearts full of hopes and empathy.

    Women are the vanguard of the protests

    Ala talked about the importance of women in Iran’s uprising:

    The point that distinguishes these protests from other protests is the presence and strong role of women in it, women who have broken the silence for many years and are in the field as the… vanguard and flag bearer of these struggles.

    For many years – as a Kurdish woman – I have witnessed the oppression that has been committed against the Kurds, and on the other hand I have witnessed the good thinking behind the Kurdish struggles. Jin, Jiyan Azadi! [Women, Life Freedom!] It is not just a slogan but a thought, a thought that took route in Bakur, Kurdistan [the part of Kurdistan that lies within the borders of Turkey] and now it has spread its roots… and all borders and all the people of the world have heard the words of Kurds and Kurdish women’s struggles.

    Jin Jiyan, Azadi!

    Ala explained that “Jin Jiyan, Azadi” has “encouraged women of all colours and languages to fight for their rights”. According to Ala:

    Women have the main and key role in this uprising, from the very beginning when they killed Jîna Mahsa Amini because of not having proper clothing in their opinion. Until now, women have not vacated the battlefield.

    During this time I have witnessed the death of many people, I have shed tears in my heart for each of them. I am saddened by the news of people being arrested, but I will not forget what they had come to the field for, and what they lost their lives for. They died for freedom, to get their rights and others’ rights. And this conveys to me the message that now is the time to stand and fight, not the time to do nothing and cry.

    Boycott this dictatorial system

    Ala concluded her message by explaining what the people rising up in Iran need from people outside:

    The expectation that Iranian people have from people outside of Iran is to be their voice, and to use all their power to boycott this dictatorial system. And they should see these killings, and these child killings and show a serious and effective reaction. Other governments should stop their overt and covert support for the Islamic Republic, and boycott them.

    This is a revolution for all the women of the world

    Ala encouraged comrades around the world to share the news about the uprising, and to take inspiration from it. She called on us to:

    Let other people know about our struggle and inform them about what is happening in Iran, and know that this is a revolution against oppression and for all the women of the world.

    To listen to the full podcast, click here.

    Featured image of the 1 October Global rally for Iran in London, via Wikimedia Commons/Sinai Noor, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 (Cropped to 770x403px) 

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Iran to hold public trials for up to 2,000 detained in protests

    The country’s judiciary says those marching against the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini will be tried

    Iran’s judiciary has announced that it will hold public trials for as many as 1,000 people detained during recent protests in Tehran alone – and more than a thousand others outside the capital – as international concern grew over Iran’s response to the protests that began with the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her arrest.

    The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he was shocked by the number of innocent protesters who were being illegally and violently arrested. Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has already announced that she is to ask the European Union to sanction the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation.

    Continue reading…

  • Mapping Iran’s unrest: how Mahsa Amini’s death led to nationwide protests

    Interactive map shows spread of demonstrations over five weeks after woman’s death in custody

    Iran has been gripped by protests since the death in custody on 16 September of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin who had been arrested three days earlier for allegedly breaching the Islamic dress code for women. This interactive map shows how protests spread between 16 September and 21 October, fuelled by public outrage over a crackdown that has led to the deaths of other young women and girls. Now in their seventh week, the protests show no sign of ending.

    Methodology

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Advocating World War Three Is Just Mainstream Punditry Now

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    Mainstream punditry in the latter half of 2022 is rife with op-eds arguing that the US needs to vastly increase military spending because a world war is about to erupt, and they always frame it as though this would be something that happens to the US, as though its own actions would have nothing to do with it. As though it would not be the direct result of the US-centralized empire continually accelerating towards that horrific event while refusing every possible diplomatic off-ramp due to its inability to relinquish its goal of total unipolar planetary domination.

    The latest example of this trend is an article titled “Could America Win a New World War? — What It Would Take to Defeat Both China and Russia” published by Foreign Affairs, a magazine that is owned and operated by the supremely influential think tank Council on Foreign Relations.

    “The United States and its allies must plan for how to simultaneously win wars in Asia and Europe, as unpalatable as the prospect may seem,” writes the article’s author Thomas G Mahnken, adding that in some ways “the United States and its allies will have an advantage in any simultaneous war” in those two continents.

    But Mahnken doesn’t claim a world war against Russia and China would be a walk in the park; he also argues that in order to win such a war the US will need to — you guessed it — drastically increase its military spending.

    “The United States clearly needs to increase its defense manufacturing capacity and speed,” Mahnken writes. “In the short term, that involves adding shifts to existing factories. With more time, it involves expanding factories and opening new production lines. To do both, Congress will have to act now to allocate more money to increase manufacturing.”

    But exploding US weapons spending is still inadequate, Mahnken argues, saying that “the United States should work with its allies to increase their military production and the size of their weapons and munitions stockpiles” as well.

    Mahnken says this world war could be sparked “if China initiated a military operation to take Taiwan, forcing the United States and its allies to respond,” as though there would be no other options on the table besides launching into nuclear age World War Three to defend an island next to the Chinese mainland that calls itself the Republic of China. He writes that “Moscow, meanwhile, could decide that with the United States bogged down in the western Pacific, it could get away with invading more of Europe,” demonstrating the bizarre Schrödinger’s cat western propaganda paradox that Putin is always simultaneously (A) getting destroyed and humiliated in Ukraine and (B) on the cusp of waging hot war with NATO.

    Again, this is just the latest in an increasingly common genre of mainstream western punditry.

    In “The skeptics are wrong: The U.S. can confront both China and Russia,” The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin wags his finger at Democrats who think aggressions against Russia should be prioritized and Republicans who think that military and financial attention should be devoted to China, arguing porque no los dos?

    In “Could The U.S. Military Fight Russia And China At The Same Time?“, 19FortyFive’s Robert Farley answers in the affirmative, writing that “the immense fighting power of the US armed forces would not be inordinately strained by the need to wage war in both theaters” and concluding that “the United States can fight both Russia and China at once… for a while, and with the help of some friends.”

    In “Can the US Take on China, Iran and Russia All at Once?” Bloomberg’s Hal Brands answers that it would be very difficult and recommends escalating in Ukraine and Taiwan and selling Israel more advanced weaponry to get a step ahead of Russia, China and Iran respectively.

    In “International Relations Theory Suggests Great-Power War Is Coming,” the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig writes for Foreign Policy that a global democracies-versus-autocracies showdown is coming “with the United States and its status quo-oriented democratic allies in NATO, Japan, South Korea, and Australia on one side and the revisionist autocracies of China, Russia, and Iran on the other,” and that aspiring foreign policy experts should adjust their expectations accordingly.

    When they’re not arguing that World War Three is coming and we must all prepare to fight it and win, they’re arguing that a global conflict is already upon us and we must begin acting like it, as in last month’s New Yorker piece “What if We’re Already Fighting the Third World War with Russia?”

    These Beltway swamp monster pontifications are directed not just at the general public but at government policymakers and strategists as well, and it should disturb us all that their audiences are being encouraged to view a global conflict of unspeakable horror like it’s some kind of natural disaster that people don’t have any control over.

    Every measure should be taken to avoid a world war in the nuclear age. If it looks like that’s where we’re headed, the answer is not to ramp up weapons production and create entire industries dedicated to making it happen, the answer is diplomacy, de-escalation and detente. These pundits frame the rise of a multipolar world as something that must inevitably be accompanied by an explosion of violence and human suffering, when in reality we’d only wind up there as a result of decisions that were made by thinking human beings on both sides.

    It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s no omnipotent deity decreeing from on high that we must live in a world where governments brandish armageddon weapons at each other and humanity must either submit to Washington or resign itself to cataclysmic violence of planetary consequence. We could just have a world where the peoples of all nations get along with each other and work together toward the common good rather than working to dominate and subjugate each other.

    As Jeffrey Sachs recently put it, “The single biggest mistake of president Biden was to say ‘the greatest struggle of the world is between democracies and autocracies’. The real struggle of the world is to live together and overcome our common crises of environment and inequality.”

    We could have a world where our energy and resources go toward increasing human thriving and learning to collaborate with this fragile biosphere we evolved in. Where all our scientific innovation is directed toward making this planet a better place to live instead of channeling it into getting rich and finding new ways to explode human bodies. Where our old models of competition and exploitation give way to systems of collaboration and care. Where poverty, toil and misery gradually move from accepted norms of human existence to dimly remembered historical record.

    Instead we’re getting a world where we’re being hammered harder and harder with propaganda encouraging us to accept global conflict as an unavoidable reality, where politicians who voice even the mildest support for diplomacy are shouted down and demonized until they bow to the gods of war, where nuclear brinkmanship is framed as safety and de-escalation is branded as reckless endangerment.

    We don’t have to submit to this. We don’t have to keep sleepwalking into dystopia and armageddon to the beat of manipulative sociopaths. There are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and we’ve got a whole lot more at stake here than they do.

    We can have a healthy world. We’ve just got to want it badly enough. They work so hard to manufacture our consent because, ultimately, they absolutely do require it.

    ______________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Iran: deaths reported as security forces open fire on protesters in Zahedan

    Crowds in Mahabad also fired on during rally held after funeral of protester Ismail Mauludi

    Iranian security forces have opened fired on protesters in Zahedan a month after a massacre that killed scores of people in the restive south-eastern city.

    Crowds were also fired on in Mahabad, another city with a long history of resistance against the regime, in renewed deadly violence at the end of the sixth week of unrest sparked by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini on 16 September.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Green Party tells NZ ‘don’t hold back’ on protests over Iran crackdown

    RNZ News

    Aotearoa New Zealand’s Green Party has again urged the government to step up its condemnation of Iran.

    About 50 protesters burned headscarves and passports outside the Iranian embassy in the capital Wellington yesterday.

    There has been a wave of protest in Iran and around the world over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the “morality police” for violating Iran’s dress code.

    The government has been quiet on the issue — with recent news breaking of two New Zealanders who were held in Iran having now escaped the country safe and well.

    Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the government had been working hard over the past several months to ensure the safe exit of travellers Topher Richwhite and his wife Bridget Thackwray.

    Greens’ foreign affairs spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman said there was no longer anything stopping the government taking stronger action.

    Two protesters embrace during a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in Wellington on 28 October, 2022.
    Green Party foreign affairs spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman hugs a protester. Image: Angus Dreaver/RNZ News

    “Now there is no imagined or real impediment to us actually taking action and it is our responsibility to do that,” Ghahraman said.

    “We need to come to line with the rest of the world when action on Iran is concerned.

    Specific actions needed
    “There are these very specific actions we can take that will hurt the people most responsible for this violence and oppression.”

    Ghahraman wanted a freeze on the assets, bank accounts and travel of people supporting violence in Iran.

    Dozens of people stage a demonstration to protest the death of a 22-year-old woman under custody in Tehran Iran on September 21, 2022. Stringer / Anadolu Agency (Photo by STRINGER / ANADOLU AGENCY / Anadolu Agency via AFP)
    Protests continue in Iran . . . NZ Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta says NZ was “appalled” by the use of force by Iranian authorities. Photo: Andalou/RNZ News

    There has been an upsurge in the protests this week, with tens of thousands taking to the streets in major cities across Iran after security forces were reported to have opened fire on protesters in Saqquez, Amini’s home city, on Wednesday.

    In a tweet, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said Aotearoa was “appalled” by the use of force by Iranian authorities overnight.

    “Violence against women, girls or any other members of Iranian society to prevent their exercise of universal human rights is unacceptable and must end.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Academic warns of more hostage crises as ‘revolution’ unfolds in Iran

    RNZ News

    An academic says hostage diplomacy is a well-known tactic of the Iranian regime and New Zealanders should not go to the country.

    Topher Richwhite and Bridget Thackwray are understood to have been detained for months after entering Iran.

    The New Zealand government negotiated for the safe release of the pair but has remained tight-lipped about the details.

    A senior lecturer from Massey University who was born and raised in Iran, Dr Negar Partow, said there was a pattern of this kind of action in Iran.

    However, she told RNZ Morning Report it was not necessarily naive for the couple to visit the country.

    When they arrived in July it was much quieter than what it became when the unrest started in September after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was detained by morality police for allegedly not covering her hair properly.

    However, travelling in a Jeep — a US brand — might have created suspicions, she said.

    NZ not especially targeted
    The move against the New Zealanders was not especially targeted at this country, she said, with as many as 70 nations having citizens in Iranian prisons.

    “The fact that Iran entered a revolutionary phase complicated the situation and gave the Islamic Republic the opportunity to use them and to create a hostage diplomacy. This is not particular to Aotearoa. They do it all around the world,” she said.

    Topher Richwhite and Bridget Thackwray, pictured in South Africa, recorded their round the world travels on Instagram.
    Topher Richwhite and his wife Bridget Thackwray pictured in South Africa . . . they may have attracted attention in Iran driving their US-branded Jeep, says an academic. Image: Expeditionearth.live/Instagram/RNZ

    People with dual citizenship, diplomats, activists, and human rights and environmental advocates were especially vulnerable to attention from Iranian authorities.

    If the couple had been focusing on environmental concerns that may have made them a target, she said.

    “As the Islamic Republic becomes more and more challenged and de-legitimised by this revolution, these hostage crises will increase and they will use any opportunity as a bargaining chip.”

    There have been conflicting reports on now the couple were detained.

    Dr Partow said Iran used different models, including imprisonment or being detained in a safe house and not being allowed to communicate.

    Richwhite and Thackwray would have had their passports confiscated and their cellphones removed with their Instagram posts stopping in July.

    She believed they were not put in prison.

    Tepid resoponse by NZ
    Asked about the tepid response by the New Zealand government to the unrest in Iran, she said the government was trying to do a delicate balancing act while the couple were being detained.

    Many Western governments had to resort to hostage diplomacy with Iran.

    Protesters over death of Mahsa Amini
    Exiled Iranians of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in front of the embassy of Iran in Berlin, Germany, with images of Mahsa Amini. Image: RNZ File

    While Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has warned against visiting Iran due to the potential for violence, Dr Partow said it was important to remember the violence was being perpetrated by the security agencies not the protesters.

    She said now that the couple had been freed, she was hopeful Aotearoa would take a stronger stance.

    “Yes we have been too kind but I’m hoping that as we come out of this period and everybody’s back to normal diplomacy we will take stronger action against the Islamic republic,” she said.

    “As the prime minister mentioned as well, this was a delicate diplomatic situation … we did have two New Zealanders inside Iran detained and I think that [strong criticism of Iran] would create more complications.”

    Expulsion of ambassador
    The expulsion of the ambassador, campaigning for oil embargoes, speaking out publicly to support the rights of Iranian women and human rights lobbying at the United Nations were among measures New Zealand should be considering.

    “Now that we have been the victim of hostage crisis in the Islamic Republic that should give us much more importance into the project and we should actually work on it,” she said.

    As for advice for potential visitors, she said: “Definitely not. Iran is in the middle of a revolution.”

    Ordinary citizens were not in a position to offer help to foreign tourists and it was far better that they stayed away.

    She said as the revolution approached the six-week mark, the response from authorities to the demonstrations was becoming even more violent and oppressive.

    Asked about Act’s move to block a motion calling for a unified condemnation of Iran’s oppression of women’s rights unless Greens MP Golriz Ghahraman apologised for interrupting a speech made by party leader David Seymour in the House, she said it should be remembered that the Iranian government was now killing children and this was a more important consideration.

    Deputy PM pleased couple released
    The government is remaining tight lipped about what it took to secure the release of the couple.

    Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said Iran was a dangerous place and New Zealanders should obey the travel warnings not to go there.

    Consular officials around the world did not judge New Zealanders who got into trouble —  instead they got on with the job of helping them regain their freedom.

    “I’m just pleased we’ve been able to get them out.”

    Robertson told RNZ First Up he could not comment specifically on the couple’s case — but he said it was important to understand the customs and rules of other countries — and to understand whether you should be there at all.

    He said no doubt the pair would reflect on what they have been through.

    Call for NZ govt to take strong stand
    An Iranian-Kurdish journalist now living in New Zealand said the government needed to do more regarding the actions of Iran’s government.

    Behrouz Boochani, who was granted refugee status in New Zealand in July 2020, said New Zealand should speak out loudly against the Iranian regime.

    He said the current unrest was a revolution and was a call for regime change in Iran.

    While there had been mass protests in the past, this year felt different because it involved more people and more cities.

    He said he was delighted the couple had been freed. However, the Iranian community in New Zealand had been disappointed in Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s response to the unrest in Iran to this point.

    He said since Mahsa Amini’s death another 250 people had been killed, including more than 20 children.

    “So we expect the New Zealand government to strongly condemn this violence and strongly support the protesters on the street and the people of Iran.”

    The US and Australia have criticised the Iranian government’s actions and it was time New Zealand followed suit.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Women’s Movement in Iran Has Already Secured a Major Victory

    As a feminist friend from Iran tweeted recently, the women’s movement in Iran has already secured a major victory. Women in Iran will never again be ignored or underestimated. They have undeniably staked their claim to equal rights, inspiring many others to rise despite years of crushing repression and oppression. This is no small feat and an essential condition for any truly revolutionary movement. Through their struggle, they have also sparked a feminist transnational awareness that promises a new solidarity that crosses class, racial and religious boundaries.

    Iranians around the world are sharing an unprecedented moment of national pride in solidarity with the uprising for freedom and justice in Iran. Entering its sixth week of sustained confrontation with the security forces of the Islamic Republic, the protests continue unabated while the death toll rises. This spontaneous grassroots uprising was set in motion by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died after her arrest by the “morality police” for not observing a government-mandated Islamic dress code. Since late September, the uprising has grown from militant street protests led by young women to widespread national demonstrations.

    Large student demonstrations in Tehran and many other cities have been met with arrests and bloody reprisals. University students have a long history of anti-dictatorship, anti-imperialist struggle in Iran going back to the months following the 1953 coup d’etat against the nationalist government of Mohammad Mossadegh. December 7 marks “Student Day” commemorating the killing of three Tehran University students during protests against then-Vice President Richard Nixon’s visit to Iran in that year. Students have remained at the forefront of opposition to the Islamic Republic as witnessed during the militant and widespread 1999 student protests and again in 2009 during the Green movement. The current uprising includes elementary and high school students as well. The violent response by the authorities to their participation has alarmed the international community.

    News of worker strikes in different industries including oil and petrochemicals has also brought the uprising to a new level, one that poses a deeper threat to the stability of the government. While reliance on oil has decreased in recent years, it remains a major source of government income. As in the 1979 revolution, the mobilization of workers in the oil industry is seen to be crucial to the success of the current uprising, both because of the economic impact it will have, and the influence it will have on workers in other sectors to strike as well.

    Why are people risking their lives on the streets of Tehran and dozens of other cities across the country despite a relentless crackdown by Iran’s brutal security forces (police, plainclothes “Basiji” paramilitary, the army, and the powerful “Sepah” or Revolutionary Guards)? “Woman, Life, Freedom” (Jin, Jiyan, Azadi), a slogan that originated in the Kurdish national movement and has been the movement’s rallying cry from day one, was first raised in protests in Saqqez, in Iranian Kurdistan (Mahsa Amini’s hometown). It is attributed to Abdullah Ocalan, one of the leaders of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), who placed women at the center of the Kurdish liberation movement. During the recent uprising, it has united women and men, old and young, across class, religious and geographic boundaries around three major shared hardships: increasing violence against women, deteriorating living conditions, and an oppressive lack of personal and civil freedoms. Other chants like “Death to the Dictator” and “Down with the Islamic Republic” focus on the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the regime itself, and clearly signify a call for a political revolution, reminiscent of the sentiment toward the shah in 1979.

    The Iranian protest song “Baraye” (“For”) by Shervin Hajipour captures the country’s nascent revolutionary movement in its fullness. Hajipour, who was arrested soon after his song became the anthem for the movement (he has since been released), collected the hopes and sorrows of Iranians expressed on hundreds of different social media posts. From these he composed and set to music a simple but emotional inventory of the many motivations behind the freedom movement in Iran. It is not surprising that a campaign on TikTok urging users to submit the song for one of the Grammys’ new special merit awards resulted in the song receiving over 83 percent of the 115,000 nominations.

    The song Baraye suggests the breadth and depth of the movement as well as common concerns shared by many people inside and outside of Iran: for women’s rights, personal freedoms of choice and expression, the shame of poverty and social injustice, the destruction of the environment, endangered species, animal rights, students’ rights, children’s rights, corruption, political prisoners, gender rights, and for a peaceful, ordinary life free from anxiety and sleeplessness!

    Like so many Iranian emigres, I do not wander far from my cellphone these days, making sure to be available if friends or family from Iran should call. And I am incessantly summoned by notices to check my email and other messaging and social media accounts. There are times when it is overwhelming, and I want to stop, try to go back to normal life, but then the urgency of it all hits. After nearly 44 years of living under one of the most repressive regimes in history, the people of Iran have once again risen in anger, against all odds, this time led by young women and men who are armed with the barest means of self-defense but filled with unbound courage and hope. And all they ask of us is to keep their voice alive, to garner support from the world community, to hold the Islamic Republic regime accountable for its past and current abuses of human and civil rights.

    Time is of the essence and questions keep me up at night. Will there be greater bloodshed tomorrow? Will the government succeed in cutting off the country completely? Will foreign powers, overtly or covertly, intervene and try to install a friendly alternative rather than respecting the aspirations of those struggling on the ground? How long can this popular-grown movement survive without a cohesive leadership?

    The hope is that the movement will be able to quickly mature — organize, educate, mobilize — before the government or outside forces can defeat it. There is no single individual or party that is leading the movement today. Instead, we are learning through social media of new student-, worker- and neighborhood-based “coordinating” committees and councils. Hoping to prevent any potential leadership from emerging, scores of activists, many of who come from existing grassroots organizations, were “preventatively” detained in early October, joining other labor leaders, women’s rights activists and others already in prison before the uprisings.

    Despite the very real possibility that it may have to retreat due to increased repression by the government’s security forces, as others have in the past (most recently in 2019), this movement, led by women, is more inclusive than those that came before it. Most importantly, different nationalities (from Kurdish, Turkish, Arab and Baluchi areas) have joined the movement in solidarity. We can also take heart in the incredible resourcefulness of the movement, the creativity of young people who use social media and the internet as important organizing tools, and the growing participation of workers and professionals.

    Time is of the essence. Raise your voice, “baraye” women and the freedom movement in Iran.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Protests, strikes continue in Iran despite killings, repression

    Iranian teachers staged a two-day strike on October 24, as anti-government sentiment continues to grow, reports Susan Price.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Solidarity With Iranians Starts With Bringing an End to US Sanctions

    The uprising sweeping Iran in response to the murder of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa (Jîna) Amini by the country’s morality police for “improper dress” is one of the truly monumental political events of our time. The upsurge began as an outraged response by women across Iran, who share the practically universal experience of harassment — and worse — by that police force. But it has quickly developed into something greater and deeper, with men taking up the cause of women’s rights, the whole protest wave taking up the slogan of the Kurdish freedom movement — “Women, Life, Freedom” — and huge crowds in the streets raising longstanding grievances with the Iranian government’s restrictions, repression and its presiding over a disastrous economy.

    Despite severe repression — with the state killing more than 200 people and hurting countless people with unbridled brutality and especially targeting Kurdish and Baloch areas — the uprisings are persisting and animating more sectors of Iranian society. Students and faculty at Tehran’s Sharif University faced the police in a defiant occupation and battle. Oil workers have gone on strike. And Iran’s adolescent girls have unleashed a new wave of revolt, chasing away administrators, taking over their schools, and — as with women of all ages — choosing to defy mandatory head covering.

    As this revolt shakes Iran to its core, however, it has barely registered in the mainstream U.S. public. After initial quiet, Biden and other U.S. officials are making a calculated move to voice rhetorical support for the protests. This may undermine them, however, by giving the Iranian state an alibi to paint the revolts as machinations of Washington. The Biden administration did do something useful by finally heeding the years-long call to lift a sanction on telecommunications. On balance, however, Washington is discussing the escalation of its extensive, devastating sanctions regime — the very one responsible for Iran’s economic catastrophe. Indeed, think tanks in Washington that have long cultivated militarism against Iran are holding events to assess and take advantage of the new situation.

    Ironically, while the U.S. government and right-wing organizations are stirred to action, and we are seeing more coverage in the mainstream media, it is the U.S. left — beyond Iranian and Iranian American folks — that appears quiet in comparison. There is little conversation, and with some exceptions, little is being published in left and progressive media.

    A number of things explain the muted response. The U.S. progressive community struggles in general when it comes to relating to international politics. Moreover, we have been consistently divided and often uncertain about our role when the U.S. is not the primary antagonist driving a violent injustice — something which also helps explain the division and confusion in the progressive community here when Russia invaded Ukraine. This challenge is especially complicated when the force that is committing the injustice is a state — however repressive, corrupt or reactionary — that is considered to be an enemy of the U.S. In the case of Iran, for example, some on the left wrongly consider Tehran to be playing a progressive, anti-imperialist role by countering U.S. power.

    The current revolt in Iran not only has profound implications for Iranian society; it also offers those of us here who seek a freer world an opportunity to overcome the historic obstacles to our ability to relate to liberation struggles abroad.

    To that end, Truthout spoke with some left-wing Iranians in the large and diverse diaspora to see what they think we in the U.S. progressive community could be doing more of in solidarity with this revolt.

    Perhaps the first thing is truly appreciating the significance of the uprising itself — for Iran, and for all of us.

    Alex Reza Shams, a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Chicago, asserts that “the revolts in Iran should inspire us all to remember that resistance is possible even in the most oppressive of circumstances.”

    “For decades, the Iranian state has crushed independent political organizing — and yet despite that, people have kept hope alive and have continued dreaming of a different future,” he continues. “Hope is something that cannot be killed — and it can inspire us to do great and previously unimaginable things — like rise up against a tyrant even when we don’t think there is much of a chance that we might succeed.”

    Second, it’s important to identify and appreciate our relationship to Iranian society as residents of the United States. After all, while the current uprising is first and foremost directed at the brutal Iranian state, the U.S. has played a decisive role in producing untold suffering for generations of Iranians. As Azadeh Shahshahani, a human rights lawyer and the legal and policy adviser at Project South in Atlanta, points out, “U.S. policies have only added to the oppression and suffering of the Iranian people — from the 1953 CIA-backed coup which overthrew Iran’s democratically elected leader to more than 40 years of [devastating] economic sanctions to U.S. support for Saddam Hussein during his invasion of Iran and the ensuing devastating war.”

    Not only does the U.S. bear tremendous responsibility for the circumstances that Iranians are revolting against — which are decades in the making — but as people located here, we are in the best position to effect change in Washington.

    “Folks on the ground need to recognize where their power is, and who they have power over when leveraged,”
    says Hoda Katebi, an Iranian American writer and organizer. “Those of us not in Iran are not in a position to directly exert power on the government in Iran. People in Iran are doing that, and we should follow their lead, understand how we’re implicated in their demands, and act accordingly within the power we have here in the United States. The originally Kurdish slogan of ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ is about bodily autonomy and mandatory dress codes but it is also about economic justice and liberation. Concretely for us here, that means fighting to lift U.S. economic sanctions that directly impacts protestors and striking workers and ensuring no U.S. intervention in Iranian self-determination.”

    Indeed, stepping up the campaign against U.S. sanctions is a straightforward way to offer solidarity that everyone interviewed pointed to. These sanctions are intimately linked with both Iranian suffering and with Tehran’s behavior.

    “U.S. sanctions on Iran have impoverished ordinary people and strengthened the most repressive aspects of the regime,” notes Shams. “And the regime has responded to the economic pressure by implementing neoliberal reforms that further impoverish the people — and responding with bullets when they protest. As a result, the situation has become more militarized in Iran than ever before — and the constant U.S. threat of war provides the regime with a rationale to keep it that way.”

    Shahshahani also calls attention to the political impact of U.S. sanctions for Iranian society. “Sanctions have negatively impacted civil society and women,” she says. “Iranian women leaders have come out strongly against the current ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions as they isolate civil society groups from international funding, impact socioeconomically vulnerable populations, and limit their political space for participation.”

    Clearly, Iranian women, Kurds, workers and students are claiming that space, leaving the Iranian state scrambling as its brute repression fails to extinguish the revolt. But we can imagine how much more spacious social and political life in Iran could be without the suffocating economic sanctions that make it untenable to make ends meet, especially for the most vulnerable.

    The people of Iran are the protagonists in this story, defying their government — and American, Islamophobic notions that they are helpless people suffering at the hands of a tyrannical state. But it is abundantly evident that the people of Iran do not need the U.S. to rescue them. They do, however, deserve our solidarity. As people who live in the U.S., we have a role to play in stopping the harm caused by Washington — and helping the people of Iran breathe freer.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate: Nothing Will Be the Same After the Protests

    We look at the scope, scale and sustainability of the protests in Iran, which have entered their second month, after being sparked in September by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s so-called morality police. More than a thousand protesters have been arrested, while some children have been sent to reeducation camps. The United Nations said Tuesday at least 23 children have been killed in the demonstrations. We speak in depth with Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for her legal work on behalf of women and children in Iran, and she has lived in exile since 2009. Unlike previous protest movements, such as the 2009 Green Movement, she says today’s protesters are demanding fundamental change to the country’s system of government. “For 43 years, people have bottled up all this anger. For 43 years, the regime has turned a deaf ear to the demands of the people, and anyone who said anything against the regime has either ended up in prison or killed or has fled the country,” says Ebadi.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

    Today we look at the scope, the scale, sustainability of the protests in Iran, which have entered their second month, after being sparked in September by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in custody of Iran’s so-called morality police. More than a thousand protesters have been arrested. Some children have been sent to so-called reeducation camps. The United Nations said Tuesday at least 23 children have been killed in the protests, one aged 11 years old. The Guardian reports another schoolgirl was killed by Iranian police after she was beaten when she refused to sing a pro-regime song during a raid on her school.

    Meanwhile, dozens rallied at Tehran’s international airport Wednesday evening, where they cheered the return of Elnaz Rekabi, a female rock climber who drew international headlines when she joined a competition in South Korea without wearing a headscarf. On Sunday, the 33-year-old climber wore her hair in a ponytail, covered partially by a headband — in violation of Iran’s strict dress code — during a climb at the International Federation of Sport Climbing’s Asian Championships in Seoul. There were conflicting reports in the Iranian media about whether Rekabi will now face arrest. She said in an interview with a state-run news agency Wednesday evening that she had unintentionally forgotten to put on her hijab.

    ELNAZ REKABI: [translated] The struggle that I had with wearing my shoes and preparing my gear made me forget about the proper hijab that I should have had, and I went to the wall and ascended.

    AMY GOODMAN: This comes as a massive fire engulfed parts of Tehran’s infamous Evin prison Saturday, killing at least eight people, injuring dozens more. Witnesses reported hearing explosions and gunfire coming from the prison, known for holding political prisoners.

    Democracy Now!’s Nermeen Shaikh and I spoke about all of this and more in an in-depth interview with the Iranian activist and lawyer Dr. Shirin Ebadi, once held at the Evin prison. Shirin Ebadi was the first female judge in Iran. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, all female judges were dismissed. In 1999, she was imprisoned for nearly a month for her work defending prisoners of conscience. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to win the award. She used the prize money to set up the Defenders of Human Rights Center. She worked as a human rights lawyer in Iran for decades, focusing in particular on the rights of women, children and political prisoners. She has lived in exile since 2009. Dr. Ebadi joined us from London Wednesday. I began by asking her about the protests.

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] The scale of these recent protests are so wide, even schoolchildren have joined the line of protesters. Even schoolchildren do not want to accept the educational system in Iran. The scale of the protests, the recent ones, of course, go much, much further and wider than the previous ones.

    And the main difference between these protests and the previous ones is that in the previous protests the people used to congregate in various places around cities and towns and chant slogans, but now they’ve become wiser, the protesters. They make sure that their protests are all over the country, in various areas, and sporadic. And so it makes it very difficult for anti-riot forces to be present in every corner of the country.

    And it’s very regrettable that in order to crack down on these protesters, the regime is even trying to persuade children by giving them money to go and join the government forces and stand against the protesters. And meanwhile, many protesters have been arrested, including schoolchildren, and one of the schoolchildren was killed when the school was raided. And also, the regime is exploiting orphans in the country, and it’s turning them more or less into child soldiers for the regime.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Ebadi, could you elaborate on that? What do you mean that the regime is turning children into child soldiers?

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] Look, the Iranian government is a signatory to the Convention for the Rights of the Child. And as you know, that convention says it is forbidden to use children in wars, in conflicts. But the Iranian government used these children as child soldiers in the Iran-Iraq War, if you remember, and even now it’s using some children for the same purpose.

    And the situation of children in Iran is absolutely dire. Children under the age of 18 are executed. And it’s one of the very few countries in the world where there is still death penalty for young people under the age of 18. And they also constantly arrest and imprison juveniles.

    And when you look at the footage from the protests, you actually can actually see these children who are clearly under the age of 18. And it’s very clear that they either pay these children or they try every way possible to persuade these children to join them, because they don’t have enough soldiers in their anti-riot force.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Ebadi, could you also explain how the changing demographics in the country have altered in the years since the revolution? Half of the population of Iran was born now after the ’79 Revolution, and so have known no other government than the governments that came into power following that. And also the literacy rates among women, the way that they’ve increased exponentially since the revolution — prior to ’79, women’s literacy was below 30%, and now it’s over 80%. More than half of students at universities are now women. How does this figure into the protests happening today and the fact that we see, as you were talking about earlier, so many young people participating, and that these protests are really being led by women, young women?

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] Yes, absolutely. Over 50% of students in our universities are female. And likewise, many of our professors at university are female. We have highly educated women in the country. And it’s natural that educated women are aware. They’re aware of their rights. And they cannot tolerate the discrimination they are being subjected to, and they have been subjected to since the 1979 Revolution. And it is for that very reason that in every protest — and I’m not just talking about the recent protests, but in every protest we’ve had since the revolution — it’s the women who have been at the forefront.

    And I would like to elaborate and give you a few examples of some of the laws that were adopted after the 1979 Revolution, so you can understand why women are protesting. In addition to enforced hijab in Iran, based on law in Iran, the life of a woman is only considered worth half of that a man. For instance, if my brother and I are in a car crash, and the damage a court of law awards to my brother is twice as much as that awarded to me. And also, the testimony of two women in Iran is tantamount to the testimony of one man in a court of law. Or, if a married woman wants to travel, she will not be allowed to do so without the written permission of her husband. And we have so many discriminatory laws against women. So, it’s very natural that such educated women will not put up with such discriminatory laws, all of which, I repeat, were adopted after the 1979 Revolution. That is why the disenchantment is chiefly among women.

    AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ebadi, there was a fire that broke out at the notorious Evin prison this weekend. At least eight people died. This is a place where political prisoners have been held for years. I believe you yourself was held there. But you certainly represented prisoners who have been held there. Can you talk about what you understand happened and the significance of this prison?

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] The precise reason for the fire is still not clear. According to the government, the prisoners had started the fire. However, the conditions in the prison are not such to allow prisoners to do such a thing. There is — they have a room where they do needlework, and they claimed that the fire started there. Usually at 5:00, they close the needlework factory, and so they would not have been — and they said the fire started there. So, how could the fire have started there, when the door was shut at 5 p.m. as it is every day?

    Also, the first report that was broadcast on state media after this incident was that the eight people killed were trying to escape prison. And as they were trying to escape, they stepped on mines that we have around the prison. So, what you heard was not the sound of bullets; it was the sound of explosions resulting from the mines they have stepped on. And it’s really tragic to hear that, because the government, in a way, is admitting that inside the city, inside a prison, they have planted mines. And this is a serious offense, and the Iranian government should be made answerable. They are not allowed to put mines anywhere.

    So, the real reason is still not clear, nor is the number of those killed so far. However, there are a number of prisoners that no one has heard from since. And no one has been able to contact them or have meetings with them. We have heard that the women’s ward for political prisoners, they are OK, and nothing has happened to them. However, in the men’s section, there are some prisoners, political prisoners, we have not heard from, and we are extremely worried about them. We don’t know whether they’ve been killed, whether they’re injured; if they’re injured, which hospital they’re in. Why do we not know what has happened to them?

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Ebadi, you yourself were imprisoned at Evin, as was your husband. When exactly was that? And could you talk about what the conditions in the prison were, and if and whether — whether and how conditions in the prison changed over the years, as you continued to represent people detained there?

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] It was about 1999 when I was imprisoned in Evin. And while I was there, I was put in solitary confinement. And solitary confinement is a very, very small, narrow room without a bed or chair. And they just gave us a dirty blanket, and not a pillow or anything to sleep on. So we had to — I had to sleep on the floor without a pillow. And as a result, I have had health problems since. They take everything away from us. They took my watch and even my reading glasses. And we are completely isolated in solitary confinement. We have no opportunity to speak to anybody, including our lawyers. And I can say the situation has not changed. It’s still the same.

    And all those who are prisoners of conscience, when arrested, they have to experience solitary confinement for a while, because in solitary confinement they can put psychological pressure on the prisoner and make them confess, make false confessions. And unfortunately, these prisoners are subjected to the most gruesome tortures in all Iran’s prisons, including Evin. And I’m sure you’re aware that several prisoners died under torture, including a young worker who was a blogger. And his name was Sattar Beheshti. And a few years ago, he died. He was under torture. And unfortunately, every year we have one or two political prisoners who die under torture. We have figures for all that.

    AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ebadi, do you think President Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear accord further radicalized the regime there by isolating it further with increased sanctions? And I’m wondering what you think the U.S. policy should be today?

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] I am going to answer your question in this way, that before — Iran was not under any sanctions for three years after the signing of JCPOA, before Trump pulled out of JCPOA. And in the three years that there were no sanctions on Iran, there were no improvements in Iranian people’s welfare situation. So, it makes no difference for the Iranian people’s welfare and economic situations whether the United States is a party to JCPOA or not, or whether or not there have been sanctions on Iran.

    However, if they do lift sanctions against Iran, be sure that Iran does not spend any of its money on the people. What does it spend the money on? It spends it on Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Houthis in Yemen or Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. And more recently, it’s been helping Russia to kill the Ukrainian people, unfortunately. The Iranian people’s welfare and well-being means nothing to the Islamic Republic’s regime.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Ebadi, on Evin prison, one of the people who has been held there now for years is someone you worked very closely with, the Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. She was also your lawyer for a time. Could you talk about what you know of her situation today? She’s been — she was previously awarded both the Right Livelihood Award as well as the Sakharov Prize. She was initially imprisoned for 38 years, but her sentence has reportedly been reduced.

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] Nasrin Sotoudeh is a human rights lawyer, and she is a colleague of mine. And she ends up in prison. And she’s been meted out a long prison sentence for defending human rights prisoners. She’s been ill in prison. And fortunately, thanks to the doctors, they have allowed her to come on leave to receive some treatment.

    Working for human rights and defending the rights of people in Iranian courts is considered a crime these days. The human rights lawyers who end up in prison are charged with allegations such as: “You must be against the government; otherwise, you wouldn’t be defending people who are anti-government.” And I have said on many occasions, “Look, if we are defending a thief, does it mean that we are complicit in the act of theft? So, why do you arrest a lawyer who is defending human rights activists and accuse him of being complicit with such people, with the opposition?”

    That is why many political activists, whether they’re lawyers or nonlawyers, they end up in prison. I have to remind you, we have very well-known film directors in prison. We have very well-known authors in prison. And the situation in Iran is that anyone who says a word against the government, or makes a documentary or a film about the government, or writes anything against the government, will, without doubt, end up behind bars.

    AMY GOODMAN: Iranian activist and lawyer, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Dr. Shirin Ebadi, speaking to us from London. When we come back, we continue our conversation, ask her about the Iranian president, Raisi, the protesters’ demands for regime change, and about the violence of security forces throughout the country, including Iran’s Kurdistan region, which was where 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was from. She was killed by Iranian so-called morality police in Tehran last month, sparking nationwide protests. Stay with us.

    [break]

    AMY GOODMAN: “Come My Habibi” by the band Habibi. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

    We continue our conversation with the Iranian activist, the lawyer, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Dr. Shirin Ebadi. She writes in her book, Until We Are Free, quote, “I received the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2003 for my efforts for democracy and human rights, and though you would think that this would have propelled my work in Iran and won me some grudging respect, it put me under even more pressure and scrutiny by the government. The Iranian state did everything it could to suppress the news of my award, forbidding the state radio and TV stations to so much as mention it and putting me under an even more severe news embargo. When a reporter asked President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who was in power at the time, why he had not congratulated me, he responded, ‘This isn’t such an important prize. It’s only the Nobel in literature that really matters,’” he said.

    That’s Dr. Shirin Ebadi. She worked as a human rights lawyer in Iran for decades, was the first female judge in Iran. She has lived in exile since 2009. Democracy Now!’s Nermeen Shaikh and I spoke with her on Wednesday.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Ebadi, just to go back to what you were saying about the protests, that these are different from all the protests that erupted in Iran — that have erupted over the course of the last more than 40 years since the revolution, could you explain? I mean, the one that received an enormous amount of coverage here was the 2009 Green Movement, when also millions of people turned out on the streets. The protests lasted for seven months. And even then, the regime response, the government response, was quite brutal. How do you see this protest as different from that one? And do you think this will endure, given how brutal and violent the government response has been?

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] Look, in the previous protests, such as the one in 2009, people had specific demand. In 2009, they were protesting against a rigged election. They were saying, “What happened to my vote?” But now the demand is different, and the demand is a political one. They want regime change. And they have all taken to the streets, and they are all chanting, “We want regime change.” This is one of the fundamental differences between these protests and the previous ones.

    And the people are resisting a lot better than before, of course. The prisons are full. Many have been killed. Many have been injured. And because the prisons are overcrowded, the regime is even using sports stadium as prisons.

    I somehow doubt very much that the government will again be able to repress the people. I think the people will succeed. As I said, even schoolchildren can no longer tolerate this. They have refused to go to their classes, and they have taken to the streets. And you see generations next to each other. You see children, parents, grandparents protesting together on the streets. And even let’s assume that the government manages to repress the people by intensifying their crackdown. I promise you that in very, very short time there will be yet another protest in Iran. In fact, Iran, it is like a powder keg about to explode. They may be able to try and — it’s a fire. It’s a fire that is about to become bigger and bigger. So, there is nothing the government can do.

    AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ebadi, if you can talk about the marginalized regions — for example, the violence of security forces in Iran’s Kurdistan? Mahsa Amini, the young woman who was the flashpoint in these protests, was 22 years old, an Iranian Kurdish woman from Kurdistan, though she was killed in Tehran. And also, the systemic killing of Balochi protesters, what is the status of the Balochi minority? The Balochi are mostly Sunni, in a majority-Shia state.

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] Unfortunately, the minorities in Iran are subjected to extreme discrimination. When you look at the people on death row in Iran, you will see that 95% of those on death row are from minorities in Iran. The government represses them more than others. Mahsa Amini, in her birth certificate, she wanted to — her parents wanted to call her Zhina, which is a Kurdish name, but the government did not allow that, because, they said, “You’re not allowed to choose a Kurdish name; you have to choose a Farsi or Persian name for your child.” And this is real oppression against a minority group.

    Mahsa was a young girl. She had come to Tehran just as a tourist and also to visit a few of her relatives. And she was on the street with her brother when the morality police, under the pretext that her headscarf wasn’t covering the whole head, arrested her, and they took her to a detention center. And unfortunately, a few hours later, an ambulance left that detention center which was carrying the corpse of Mahsa. And the doctors in the hospital said that when Mahsa arrived in the hospital, she had suffered from concussion, and there was nothing we could do about it. And the pictures that they took of Mahsa in hospital, when you can see her with the drips and serums attached to her, you can see clearly that there is blood coming out of her ears in those pictures, which is a clear sign that she was concussed. And she was clearly in — you know, she had fallen into coma and started bleeding. But since this government never tells the truth, they said that she had — she was already sick, she had underlying diseases, and she had died from there. And that made the people even angrier.

    Now, in Zahedan, a commander of police force raped a 15-year-old girl. And they took the case to court, and it didn’t get anywhere, so the people became very angry. So, the people of Zahedan, especially the young people, they decided to take to the streets after the Friday prayers and chant against that commander who had raped this young girl. And the Friday prayers had just ended in Zahedan, that some 20 to 30 Balochi youth started chanting against the whole regime, that is a not — that is ignoring justice and is not bringing this commander to book. But since the police knew this was going to happen, they were ready for the protesters, and they started gunning down the protesters. Even those who had just left the mosque and weren’t part of the protest, many of them were also killed. The number of those killed so far, as far as we know, over 95 have been killed. And these are the ones we know, because we have their names and we have their identity papers. And many have been injured and are still in hospital, and we are still waiting to see whether they will recover or whether they will die in hospital.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Ebadi, you mentioned earlier that the protesters are calling for a change in the regime. How do you understand what that means? Your response, for instance, to the present head of state, Ebrahim Raisi, whom Amnesty International has said there is credible evidence of his involvement in crimes against humanity? If you could talk about his record and whether you think the repression that his administration has carried out has something to do with the force of these protests?

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] Of course, there is no doubt that Raisi, in the ’80s, played a big part in the killing of political prisoners. There is no doubt about that. However, to say that the protests this time are even more powerful than before, it’s not just because of Raisi. It is because of the anger that is boiling over. And for 43 years, people have bottled up all this anger. And for 43 years, the regime has turned a deaf ear to the demands of the people. And anyone who has said anything against the regime has either ended up in prison or killed or has fled the country. There’s been a huge brain drain, and we have lost many educated people. They didn’t want to leave Iran, but they had to. So, it’s a collection of all these issues that has led to these recent protests and where people are calling for regime change.

    And allow me to add that what the people want is a democratic and a secular government. That’s what they want, because for 43 years they have suffered a theocracy, and they know what a theocracy is like. They no longer want to tolerate a theocracy. They want a democracy, and they want secularism.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: And so, could you talk about the fate of precisely the supreme leader, Khamenei, who is reportedly very ill but is grooming his son to be his successor? Could you explain the significance of that, the role that the supreme leader plays, and what impact these protests might have?

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] Khamenei has been reported ill for a very, very long time, yet we still see him giving speeches. And as always, he’s describing all these protests to the enemies. If Khamenei dies, I cannot imagine that we will have another supreme jurisconsult, or vali-ye faqih, because the situation in Iran is far worse than ever, and they will not allow any other cleric to take over and continue this despotic theocracy.

    One of the chants that you hear is — that some of the slogans chanted these days are against Mojtaba Khamenei, who is the son of Khamenei. So the people are chanting anti-Mojtaba Khamenei slogans to ensure that he doesn’t take over. But I really don’t think that if Khamenei dies, there will be any successor.

    AMY GOODMAN: How do you exactly see, Dr. Ebadi, this uprising playing out?

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] It’s still too early to predict what these protests are going to lead to, but one thing I can tell you for sure: Nothing will ever be the same in Iran after these protests, because the situation has already changed a lot since before the protests. But as to how the future will be, it is still premature to make any predictions.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, Dr. Shirin Ebadi, what do you hope will come out of these protests?

    SHIRIN EBADI: [translated] My hope is the victory of the people. My hope is that we have a — they stage a referendum under the auspices of the United Nations so that the people freely choose the government they want and their representatives. This is my wish for the people of Iran.

    AMY GOODMAN: Iranian activist and lawyer Dr. Shirin Ebadi. She was the first female judge in Iran, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She was speaking to us from London.

    And this breaking news: The British Prime Minister Liz Truss is resigning. She is the shortest-serving prime minister in U.K. history. The move comes less than a week after Truss fired her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng. She sought to blame him for the recent Tory budget, which slashed taxes and caused the pound to plummet. This comes as the U.K. is facing record inflation and a surging cost of living, which have spurred mass protests. The Daily Star had a live-stream called “Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce?” After just 45 days, the lettuce has won.

    And that does it for our show. Democracy Now! is currently accepting applications for a video news production fellow and a people and culture manager. Learn more and apply at democracynow.org.

    Democracy Now! is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud and Mary Conlon. Our executive director is Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca Staley, Jon Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike Di Filippo, Miguel Nogueira, Hugh Gran, Denis Moynihan, David Prude and Dennis McCormick.

    Tune in tomorrow on Democracy Now! We’ll be going to Britain for the latest, and we’ll also be talking about other issues. I’m Amy Goodman.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Without Ending Deadly Sanctions on Iran, There Can Be No “Woman, Life, Freedom”

    The death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who passed away in the hospital on September 16, three days after being arrested by the Iranian Guidance Patrol, has sparked massive ongoing protests in Iran. Outraged by the Iranian state’s brutal treatment of women for not observing “proper hijab,” Iranian women in different cities and rural areas have been at the forefront of the street protests, removing their hijabs, and some cutting off their hair publicly as a sign of mourning while resisting police crackdown. A month later, it has been estimated that at least 233 people, 23 of whom were children, have died in the protests.

    The Iranian protests erupted over long-time grievances resulting from the unrealized promises of the post-revolutionary Iranian state, whose anti-imperialist Islamic nationalism aspired to shed economic injustices, inequalities and the political oppression of the Mohammad Reza Pahlavi regime. However, more than four decades later, those promises are yet to be fulfilled. The ever-increasing economic and wealth gap between most of the population and the economic elites; the unequal distribution of resources (and the impoverishment of the provinces where ethnic minorities such as Kurds, Arabs and Baluch people live); and the suppression of dissent have been building for decades. The domestic economic policies in Iran are compounded by sanctions against the country, which hurt the most vulnerable segments of the Iranian population.

    A History of Sanctions

    While the U.S. has consistently imposed sanctions on Iran since the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Obama administration imposed the harshest sanctions in the history of U.S. economic warfare on Iran. On July 1, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 (CISADA) to amend the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 (ISA). CISADA added new types of restrictions that devastated the Iranian economy. The new sanctions imposed excruciating economic pressure on the Iranian population — especially the working class — and jeopardized many lives by making life-saving medicine unaffordable. The imposition of CISADA and economic pressure by the U.S. and Europe led Iran to sign the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal) in 2015 — a deal which lifted some of the sanctions (though not all of them). The Trump administration’s reversal of the JCPOA, followed by the imposition of a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions, continues under the Biden presidency. Although the Iran-U.S. negotiations have resumed this year, Israel, the U.S. hawks, and some regime-change opposition forces among the Iranian diaspora have been serious obstacles to the sanctions relief and continue their opposition to the reinstatement of the JCPOA by appropriating the Iranian protests.

    The short-lived relief that the JCPOA afforded the Iranian people notwithstanding, the longstanding sanctions — exacerbated by Trump’s renewed measures — have deeply affected the quality of life in Iran. The Iranian state’s hasty decision to implement “independent development” in an effort to bolster the economy has culminated in home-grown technologies that have had devastating environmental consequences. For example, after Obama imposed penalties for selling petrol to Iran, resulting in a 75 percent decrease in imports, Iran started to refine its own oil. This policy resulted in the production of petrol and diesel that contained 10-800 times more contaminants than the international standard. The subsequent air pollution has increased levels of cancer (especially breast cancer) in Iran, which — exacerbated by the lack of access to life-saving cancer treatments, also due to U.S. sanctions — has subjected the Iranian population to slow death.

    The renewed U.S. sanctions under Trump’s administration further decreased Iranians’ purchasing power and increased inflation at unprecedented rates. Even as the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued guidance that humanitarian items (such as medicine) would not face U.S. sanctions, the sanctions on Iranian oil and Iran’s Central Bank significantly minimized the nation’s ability to afford medicine and medical supplies — a reality that resulted in a devastatingly high rate of deaths during the coronavirus pandemic. Furthermore, even if medicine is exempt from the sanctions on paper, because of the sanctions on the Central Bank, suppliers refrain from selling medical supplies and life-saving medicine to Iran, as financial transactions are subjected to sanctions or capped at a level that render exemptions meaningless. As Human Rights Watch reported in April 2020, “the definition of drugs under US export regulations — which includes prescription and over-the-counter medicines and medical devices — excludes certain vaccines, biological and chemical products, and medical devices — including medical supplies, instruments, equipment, equipped ambulances, institutional washing machines for sterilization, and vehicles carrying medical testing equipment. This means that some of the equipment crucial to fighting the virus, such as decontamination equipment, and full-mask respirators, require a special license.” Although some international aid was allowed due to the pandemic, even humanitarian organizations that have OFAC licenses to operate within Iran struggled with legal battles that withheld their license renewal, which meant a significant delay in the first weeks of the pandemic when relief efforts were crucial.

    Increasing privatization, at odds with the ideals of the early years of the revolution, has combined with the sanctions to deepen economic inequalities and led to increasing discontent and resentment. Corruption, unemployment, the underemployment of the highly educated Iranian population and the austerity measures imposed by the state to remedy the economic crisis resulting from the sanctions, have given rise to massive protests in the past few years. For example, in June and July 2018, the drastic drop in the Iranian currency value as a result of sanctions and the lack of access to clean water in the southern province of Khuzestan resulted in protests in Tehran, Khorramshahr, Abadan and Ahwaz. More recently, in the past few months, teachers and government workers have been protesting low wages and the privatization of education. These protests have consistently been brutally suppressed by the Iranian state in the name of “national security.”

    Sanctions, as many have argued, are war by another name. Over four decades of economic sanctions have made life extremely difficult for the majority of the Iranian population without making any difference in the Iranian state’s repressive policies. In fact, sanctions — along with covert U.S. operations under the guise of “democratization projects” and the pending threat of U.S. military intervention — have actually furthered the securitization of the Iranian state and have given it a convenient excuse to silence any kind of dissent. Any protest — whether it is a response to the rise in gas prices, economic corruption and sanctions profiteering (opportunistic financial transactions and trade by private entities and corrupt government elements to profit from the misfortune of the majority of the population), constriction of social freedoms, catastrophic environmental policies, oppression of ethnic minorities, or labor injustice — is accused of “foreign collusion” and is suppressed brutally.

    Protests Continue Despite Repression

    The opportunistic appropriation of the Iranian protests by some Iranian diasporic opposition groups, as well as U.S. war hawks and the Israeli state, continues to encourage the Iranian state’s crackdown on social media and jeopardize the safety of Iranian people who bravely risk their lives in street protests. The hijacking and appropriation of Iranian protests by regime change enthusiasts are not new. In response to these threats, the Iranian state uses a strategy that is far too familiar for the Iranian people: arrest, torture and force confessions from the dissidents, whom the state accuses of “foreign collusion” and propaganda, and cut off internet access for Iranian citizens during the protests.

    Domestically, post-revolutionary Iran’s anti-imperialist ideals have lost their appeal to some segments of the Iranian population who blame the economic atrocities and rampant inflation on Iran’s geopolitical role in the region, especially its support of political groups in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. This resentment is based on the idea that the state is supporting political groups in the region while ignoring Iranians, and the claim that this support has made Iran isolated from the “West.” As such, the dire economic conditions have pitted Iranian people’s struggle against the struggles of Iran’s Arab and Afghan neighbors.

    “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi,” which is adopted from the Kurdish slogan “Jin Jian Azadi” (“Woman, Life, Freedom”), has become a rallying cry of the recent protests — encapsulating politics and life by insisting on “freedom” beyond nationalism. Zan, Zendegi, Azadi doesn’t pit the struggles of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, the U.S., Syria, Lebanon, and other parts of the world against each other, nor does it dismiss those struggles because the Iranian state appropriates them for its own geopolitical agendas. It rejects Islamophobia and orientalist representations of Muslim women and refuses to reduce the movement against compulsory hijab to a binary of religion and secularism. Zan, Zendegi, Azadi does not translate into liberal democracy’s promise of freedom — a freedom that has historically been entangled with private property, racialized and gendered notions of humans, and built upon death, debilitation, enslavement and dispossession. Zan, Zendegi, Azadi, or “Woman, Life, Freedom,” crystallizes a politics where “woman” is not an overdetermined biological identity, a symbol of national honor, or a body without subjectivity on which battles over liberation take place. “Woman, Life, Freedom” calls for a future where sanctions do not deplete life and where repression is not justified in the name of national security. Sanctions hurt women who bear the burden of economic devastation, increased violence and state repression. The call for “Woman, Life, Freedom” is not achievable unless there is an end to the deadly sanctions and sanctions profiteering.

    The massive protests in Iran signal that many Iranians — even some who are aligned with or support the state — are fed up with the corruption and repression which are ironically enforced under the guise of “morality.” After 43 years, the Iranian women who refuse the instrumentalization of their bodies as sites of morality/freedom are in the forefront of the movement.

    The shift to “Woman, Life, Freedom” in the recent protests thus represents a powerful questioning of sectarian orientation by moving toward solidarity and a different vision of world-making. “Woman, Life, Freedom” envisions a world that is not bound by nationalism, empty promises of rights or neoliberal competition, but one that strives for a life free of repression, injustice, scarcity and violence.

    If sanctions kill softly in the name of rights and international security, if the Iranian state kills brutally in the name of morality and under the cloak of anti-imperialism, and if U.S. bombs kill shamelessly in the name of liberal democracy, then “Woman, Life, Freedom” strives for a life where death does not speak the last word.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘I write what they tell me to’: Iran’s crackdown on journalists intensifies

    Independent media and human rights groups report arrests and physical assault as authorities try to suppress news of protests

    As nationwide protests enter their fourth week in Iran, the government is increasing its crackdown on activists and journalists. On 22 September Niloofar Hamedi, an Iranian journalist, was arrested after posting a picture she took of the parents of Mahsa Amini hugging each other in a Tehran hospital on the day of their daughter’s death.

    Amini, 22, died in police custody on 16 September after she was arrested for not wearing her hijab properly, which sparked the protests that then spread across the country.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Iran: Many believe this is the beginning of a revolution

    For the first time since the Islamic revolution, Iranians are united and are targeting the central pillars of the Islamic republic, including the concentration of power and authority in the hands of the ruling clergy, reports *Suzan Azadi.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.