It is almost a cliché: if there are protests in Iran, then the economic malaise is ‘the actual cause’. This time it’s different. “This is a feminist revolution,” Shadi, a 25-year-old Tehran resident, said over the phone. ‘It’s not about the economy, this is feminism, of course! This is about civil rights, about human rights. I don’t want to get beat up for what I’m wearing or not wearing. I’m Muslim, but I want to show my hair outside, I want to wear a T-shirt.’
It is precisely this urge for freedom that 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested last week in the Iranian capital by the Ershad, the vice squad. On Friday, the always healthy young woman died in the police station.
Footage of the collapsing Amini, distributed by authorities to prove no violence had been used, sparked the powder keg. Women and men have taken to the streets in Iran for five days in a row. The protest is growing in size and spreading across more and more cities, although (and because) the riot police are cracking down. At least eight people have died, probably more.
“The police are so cruel,” Shadi says. “They beat everyone, including older men and women. Plainclothes men pick up people at random. Sometimes detainees are transported in ambulances because detainees vans are stopped by demonstrators.’
Youngest generation
On Tuesday evening, the English teacher was cornered when she had to flee with others into a metro station for the tear gas. Later she was unable to reach her (non-alcoholic) pub on Valiasr, Tehran’s largest shopping street. “Valiasr was packed with people, I couldn’t get through.”
Met a year ago de Volkskrant the woman in that pub, a sanctuary with ‘This is an English speaking zone’ above the bar. On the wall are photos of John Lennon and Leonardo DiCaprio, among others. Shadi, who spoke perfectly American English, was an ‘extremist feminist’, a fan of the Beatles, Alfred Hitchcock and Freddy Mercury, and a staunch opponent of the execution of gay men and of the mandatory headscarf. Unlike many of her friends, she still called herself a ‘believing Muslim’.
Even then, Shadi and her peers in the cafe could tell that something was brewing among the youngest generation of adult Iranians, generation Z. A curious mix of despondency and rebelliousness. “Today’s teens and twenties will change patriarchy,” said Karim, a 26-year-old architecture student. ‘We are on the eve of change.’
He was not talking so much about politics, there was no longer any confidence in that anglophone zone, not even in so-called reformers. There was, however, a belief in the potential of society. “They cannot maintain that the people are behind the regime,” Karim said. “They have to come up with a compromise. More freedoms, more rights for women.’
wall of fear
It was shortly before the presidential election that would bring the conservative Ebrahim Raisi to power. Under him, at least in the last six months, the control on compliance with the dress code has become stricter again. Vans of the Ershad roamed the streets of the cities. A series of incidents resulted, videos of roughly treated women were circulated. The death of Mahsa Amini was the dramatic low point.
‘It was an accumulation’, says Peyman Jafari, Iran expert from Princeton University in the US and the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. ‘The dress code is no longer accepted by an increasing part of the population, not even by many religious women. Especially young people, whether secular or religious, say: we can’t take this anymore. The support for the hijab has melted away like snow in the sun.’
‘Nowadays it is quite normal in Iran to take off your headscarf in restaurants, for example. That’s just what women do. That is why the authorities are now taking more action on the street to show that they are still there.’
“It’s different from previous protests. These were often individual, such as a photo on social media of a woman with her hijab on a stick. Now headscarves are burned during protests. That’s really a shift. The wall of fear is falling.’
Jafari endorses Shadi’s statement that it is now mainly about women’s rights. The economic situation contributes to the dissatisfaction, but is not the main factor. You can tell by the slogans, he says. ‘Women, life, freedom’ is an important slogan. Or ‘Freedom of Choice’, in addition to the usual anti-government slogans.
The regime is in panic and doesn’t know how to respond, Jafari thinks. Not only do many religious Iranians oppose the pressure to dress, but also within the conservative rank and file there is doubt. Previously, a can of members of the Basij militia could always be opened as a show of force. Now the Basij militants are beginning to see that they are in the street facing the majority of the population. They don’t get beat up so easily anymore. ‘The regime’s own supporters are becoming demotivated’, says Jafari. ‘The discontent has spread to wider layers of the population.’
Or as Shadi, from Tehran, perhaps says with some numerical exaggeration about Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: ‘Write it down: 95 percent of the people in Iran don’t want this leader. Only 5 percent bastards support him.’