It really began millenniums ago but more recently, in the 2009 election in Eron, 30 years after Islamic Republic of Iran was established by Khomeini who wrote it’s constitution, Ahmadinejad, the presidential incumbent, a Holocaust denier, regime and/or Sepah’s favorite and a fast talker, was running against two men who wanted to reform the government. Sepah, from the early count, saw the results would end up with a runoff election and most likely Mousavi would win that race. They stole people’s votes in favor of Ahmadinejad, arrested people including Washington Post’s Iranian-American journalist, Jason Rezian, and other journalists. Many escaped and left the country in a hurry but millions who had stayed came out on the streets to demand fair elections. “Where is my vote?’’ was the main slogan.
The regime wasn’t prepared and couldn’t control these mass protests at first even though at some locations soldiers fired automatic rifles into the crowd. Eventually the regime figured out ways to shout it down. Mousavi and his activist wife were arrested and have been on house arrest, 13 years now. Meanwhile the Supreme Leader who has lots of power including his position as Commander in Chief of Iran’s entire armed forces has been the same person for decades. As of today it’s been 33 years since he has been in power.
By what little of the law was respected, Ahmadinejad couldn’t run for the third consecutive turn. The following election not only people didn’t boycott the election, even more casted their ballots and a reformist cleric, Rouhani, was elected against the conservative Raisi. From my point of view, Sepah respected the results of that election because of what they saw in 2009 and Rouhani was a cleric after all. After two terms of him in office there wasn’t any reform that I can think of. The last election, in 2021, some people lost complete trust in Islamic Republic’s election process or more likely in its constitution and Seph’s morality. There was a low turnout and a conservative cleric, Raisi, became the president. He increased the budget for Morality Police to make sure women were covering their hair properly while walking down the sidewalks. Meanwhile people were and are suffering under high unemployment and extreme inflation.
Morality Police has been around for decades and many women even with complete head covering feared these men and women in uniform. Even if they saw they spotted their vans in the same block from a distance, let alone walking by the morality police on the sidewalk. #MahsaAmini (on September 13, 2022) was not the first young woman to be arrested because the morality police thought her head covering wasn’t properly covering her hair. I can easily assume she was not the first woman to die in police custody after a beating. But somehow her martyrdom and her name became the code رمز the password which brought forth the protests across Iran, even in small ultra conservative and religious towns in Eron and across the world.
These protests are not only about freedom forced hijab. From the get go they were about freedom from oppression and economic stability. It was about women having equal rights and people living life in joy not the constant mourning of religious martyrs of decades and centuries past. (I use the term martyr in case of people who have been killed by the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially during the recent protest, because if anyone from Sepah or other regime’s brainwashed employees read this I want them to know that these young protesters who put their entire lives on the palm of their hands and head into the protest knowing that at best they can be killed and at worse they can be tortured and possibly, yes, raped and then killed, yes these young brave souls, are as martyrs as the Iran-Iraq/USA war martyrs if not as much of a martyr as Imam Housain over 1300 years ago. These Gen Zs spirits have been elevated beyond attachment to the body and the pains it might endure. They have freedom, not just for themselves but for all people in their vision board — even at the cost of their lives.
This might very well be one of the largest, if not the largest, feminist movements in the world which began by resistance of Mahsa a Kurdish Iranian who we don’t know all that much about but we deeply sense that she was a life loving and gentle yet a strong headed freedom fighter. At the very least her martyrdom brought forth to the world, on one hand, the absolute astonishment to Iranians and even the most hardcore freedom fighters from around the world, the bravery of children such as a 16 year old girl Nika Shahkarami. Sadly she died in the hands of the regime (you can Google her name with CNN and will find their report on her resistance and capture) She was sent to her Martyrdom (as the Muslim Mullahs like to say) with her mark in Persian history. There were many others such as سارینا_اسماعیل_زاده ش# a 14 year old girl but some we only know as missing.
If you see or hear of a protest in the name of #MahsaAmini مهسا_امینی# or #WomanLifeFreedom زن_زندگی_آزادی# please go and support it. You’ll not only be voicing your support for women and men in Eron but also for women and men who want equal rights and basic human rights across the world. Thank you!
