Like the war in Ukraine, the latest Iranian uprising is being fought globally, in the court of public opinion. This may be what makes it succeed at toppling the regime where so many previous protests miserably failed.
About 200 people, mostly from the Iranian diaspora, gathered before the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia in Victoria to denounce the brutal murder of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police, allegedly for improperly wearing her hijab, and also the violent repression of the protests calling for the fall of the regime.
Some international protest movements are triggered by the death of an ordinary person. For Black Lives Matter, it was Michael Brown. The Arab Spring has Mohamed Bouazizi. The latest Iranian protests revolve around Mahsa Amini, who was both nobody and, by extension, everybody. Just an ordinary woman who didn’t expect when she woke up that she would be abducted and beaten to death by her government’s fashion police. And that’s how the story reached every woman, in Iran and beyond.
Such were the stories I heard listening to the brave speakers who came forward at the event (at least those I could understand; several were in Farsi). They told of insidious yet far-reaching discrimination pertaining to women, who are forbidden from showing their faces in public, attend sport events, and even riding a bike. And of course the repression, at the hands of the morality police, is often brutal. The crowd here reacted in just as hostile a manner, chanting “Death to the dictator!” over an incident which feels like one too many.
Nobody present would believe the Iranian government’s flurry of lies in response to the victim’s death. Clearly she died of a heart attack. Or of complications from diabetes. Or perhaps a brain tumour. I’m actually surprised the government didn’t add falling off the stairs to the list. Well, we all know what happened, and no amount of effort by the regime to suppress dissent will change that. The government can shut down the Internet but news of the protests and their repression pours right around it. It can organise counter-protests blaming the West but we all know what really drives the crowd. Its security forces can shoot the mob but the latter overwhelms them many times over and its fury makes containing it a dreadful prospect for the authorities.
The participants expressed their anxiety and support for their compatriots back home who were demanding the end of a regime which, they all knew, can only end in blood. There is no point in asking the authorities to “go” because they have nowhere to go and they are way too zealous to leave anyway. Many previous attempts at rising against the regime were suppressed by force, to the point that one may wonder whether it can succeed, but not how. Awareness of this fact could be read on everyone’s grim expression, as well as their determination to see this “revolution” ended once and for all.
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Never take your rights for granted. Women in particular know even hard-earned ones are never far from being taken away.
Although the event was a relative success, its outcome leaves me most apprehensive. Regretfully, we had to end it early.
