{"id":13914,"date":"2022-09-25T05:38:31","date_gmt":"2022-09-25T12:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=13914"},"modified":"2022-09-25T05:40:41","modified_gmt":"2022-09-25T12:40:41","slug":"they-have-nothing-to-lose-why-young-iranians-are-rising-up-once-again-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=13914","title":{"rendered":"“\u2018They Have Nothing to Lose\u2019: Why Young Iranians Are Rising Up Once Again”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By <\/span>Vivian Yee<\/span> and Farnaz Fassihi, Front Page, Sunday New York Times, September 25, 2022<\/span><\/p>\n

Amid growing repression, a sickly economy and bleak prospects, the death of one young woman was all it took.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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The 22-year-old woman emerged from the Tehran subway, her dark hair covered with a black head scarf and the lines of her body obscured by loose clothing, when the capital city\u2019s Guidance Patrol spotted her. They were members of Iran\u2019s notorious morality police, enforcers of the conservative Islamic dress and behavior rules that have governed daily life for Iranians since the 1979 revolution, and newly energized under a hard-line president who took office last year.<\/p>\n

By their standards, Mahsa Amini was improperly dressed, which could mean something as simple as a wisp of hair protruding from her head scarf. They put her in a van and drove her away to a detention center, where she was to undergo re-education. Three days later, on Sept. 16, she was dead.<\/p>\n

Now, over eight days of rage, exhilaration and street battles, the most significant outpouring of anger with the ruling system in more than a decade, her name is everywhere. Iranian protesters in dozens of cities have chanted \u201cwomen, life and freedom\u201d and \u201cdeath to the dictator,\u201d rejecting the Iranian Republic\u2019s theocratic rule by targeting one of its most fundamental and divisive symbols \u2014 the ailing supreme leader<\/a>, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In several of the videos of the uprising that have torn across social media, women rip off their head scarves and burn them in street bonfires, including in deeply religious cities such as Qum and Mashhad. In one, a young woman atop a utility cabinet cuts off her hair in front of a crowd of roaring demonstrators. In another, young women dare to dance bareheaded in front of the riot police.<\/p>\n

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\u201cDeath to the dictator,\u201d protesters at Tehran University chanted on Saturday. \u201cDeath to the head scarf! Until when must we tolerate such humiliation?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Protesters in the streets of Tehran on Wednesday.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Previous protests \u2014 over fraudulent elections in 2009, economic mismanagement in 2017 and fuel price hikes in 2019 \u2014 have been ruthlessly suppressed by Iran\u2019s security forces, and this time may be no different. Yet, for the first time since the founding of the Iranian Republic, the current uprising has united rich Iranians descending from high-rise apartments in northern Tehran with struggling bazaar vendors in its working-class south, and Kurds, Turks and other ethnic minorities with members of the Fars majority.<\/p>\n

The sheer diversity of the protesters reflects the breadth of Iranians\u2019 grievances, analysts say, from a sickly economy and in-your-face corruption, to political repression and social restrictions \u2014 frustrations Iran\u2019s government has repeatedly tried, and failed, to quash.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe anger isn\u2019t over just Mahsa\u2019s death, but that she should have never been arrested in the first place,\u201d said Shadi Sadr, a prominent human rights lawyer who has campaigned for Iranian women\u2019s rights for two decades.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBecause they have nothing to lose,\u201d she added, \u201cthey are standing up and saying, \u2018Enough of this. I am willing to die to have a life worth living.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Information about the protests remains partial at best. Internet access continues to be disrupted or fully blocked, especially on widely used messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram, making it difficult for Iranians to communicate with one another or to share updates on the unrest with the outside world.<\/p>\n

But witnesses say the demonstrations, which spread to at least 80 cities on Saturday, are the most forceful, vitriolic and emboldened they can remember, far more intense than the previous tremors of unrest. Desperate to damage the powers-that-be before the inevitable crackdown, videos circulating on social media and shared with The New York Times show, protesters have set fire to security vehicles and assaulted members of Iran\u2019s widely feared paramilitary forces, in some cases killing them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A fire burning during a protest in Tehran on Monday.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Wana News Agency\/Via Reuters<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The information that has leaked out, after many hours\u2019 delay, also suggests an escalating crackdown. The authorities have moved to crush the demonstrations with violence, including live fire and tear gas. Dozens of people have died. The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Saturday that at least 17 journalists had been detained, including one of the first to report on Ms. Amini\u2019s hospitalization, and arrests of activists are also mounting.<\/p>\n

With Iran\u2019s economy at a nadir and Ayatollah Khamenei in ill health, the government is likely to dig in rather than show any signs of weakness, analysts said. But violence will only buy time, they say, not long-term peace.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The regime\u2019s top leaders have \u201calways said, \u2018We\u2019re not going to make concessions, because if we make one small concession, we\u2019ll have to make bigger concessions,\u2019\u201d said Mohamed Ali Kadivar, an Iranian-born sociologist at Boston College who studies protest movements in Iran and elsewhere. \u201cMaybe they\u2019ll push people off the street, but because people want change, repression is not going to stop this. Even with a crackdown, then they would just go home for a while and come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Avenues for pushback have dwindled in recent years, leaving Iranians with only protest as a means of demanding change. Just how much their political freedoms had shrunk became clear last year, when the country\u2019s leadership disqualified virtually all candidates except the supreme leader\u2019s preferred one, the ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi,<\/a> from the presidential election. In the process, they degraded what had once been a forum for Iranians to debate political issues and choose their representatives, even if the candidates were always preselected from within the governing apparatus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Raisi opposed returning to the 2015 nuclear deal with the United States that had put limits on Iranian nuclear development in exchange for lifting sanctions and economic openness. His election, combined with the worsening economy, left Iranians who craved better opportunities, more social freedoms and closer ties with the rest of the world in despair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran speaking at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Haiyun Jiang\/The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe reason the younger generation is taking this kind of risk is because they feel they have nothing to lose, they have no hope for the future,\u201d said Ali Vaez, Iran director for the International Crisis Group, noting that protests were now a regular feature in Iran.<\/p>\n

By continually blocking reforms, the country\u2019s leadership has \u201ccreated a situation where people no longer believe that the system is reformable,\u201d he added. \u201cI think people would be willing to tolerate a milder version of the Islamic Republic, but they\u2019ve just entrenched their positions and have created this situation. It\u2019s turned Iran into a tinderbox.\u201d<\/p>\n

The head scarf, known as the hijab, is an especially inflammatory issue: The law requiring women to wear loose robes and cover their hair in public has been a pillar of the ruling theocracy and a lightning rod for reform-minded Iranians for decades, drawing one of the first protests against the ayatollahs after the 1979 revolution from women who did not want to be forced to cover up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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During the tenure of Mr. Raisi\u2019s predecessor, the reformist Hassan Rouhani, the \u200c\u200cmorality police had been discouraged from enforcing Iran\u2019s often draconian laws against women, particularly the requirement that they wear the hijab in public in the proper fashion, entirely covering their hair. That led to young women showing more hair, even in devoutly conservative cities such as Qum. Unmarried men and women were allowed to mingle in public in some places, while contemporary Western music thumped in Western-style cafes in upscale northern Tehran.<\/p>\n

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But the country\u2019s conservative leadership saw the slippage in standards as a threat to the republic\u2019s theocratic foundations. Mr. Raisi called in July for the conservative dress laws to be implemented \u201cin full,\u201d saying that \u201cthe enemies of Iran and Islam\u201d were targeting the \u201creligious foundations and values of the society,\u201d the official news agency IRNA reported.<\/p>\n

Over the summer, Iran\u2019s morality police, which patrols public areas for infringements of Islamic rules, stepped up enforcement of hijab standards, and three coffee shops in central Qum were closed down for having bareheaded customers. In a video that was widely shared on Iranian social media in July, a mother threw herself in front of a van taking away her daughter for violating hijab rules and screamed, \u201cMy daughter is sick, I beg you not to take her.\u201d<\/p>\n

The backlash to Ms. Amini\u2019s death has been so strong that religiously conservative Iranians have spoken up alongside liberal ones. On social media, women who wear the hijab by choice have started solidarity campaigns questioning the harsh enforcement of the laws, and a prominent religious leader has said the morality police were only driving young women away from religion. Even tightly controlled state media outlets have acknowledged the issue, broadcasting at least three debates that featured reformist voices \u2014 a rarity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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During a protest in Arbil, in Iraq\u2019s Kurdistan region, women holding posters of Mahsa Amini on Saturday.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Safin Hamed\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The authorities have denied using violence on Ms. Amini. They claimed that she suffered from an underlying health condition, which her family has disputed, and that she had a heart attack in custody. But to many Iranians, photos of her lying on a hospital bed, her face bloodied, told a different story.<\/p>\n

While Mr. Raisi has promised an investigation in a small nod to the fury, Iran\u2019s response to the protests has been to give no quarter. It is the same as in previous uprisings: bullets, tear gas, arrests and blood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2009, millions of urban, educated Iranians flooded the streets of cities across the country, furious at what they believed was election rigging by their leaders to guarantee a hard-line president and thwart reforms. The elite Revolutionary Guards and the Basij paramilitary forces opened fire, killing dozens and arresting far more, and eventually the \u201cGreen Movement\u201d was stamped out.<\/p>\n

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As 2017 turned to 2018, protesters in dozens of cities demonstrated against high inflation and a weak economy. Again, they were met with force. In 2019, the government abruptly hiked gasoline prices, sparking weeklong protests by Iranians fed up with ever-thinning wallets, corruption and repression. The authorities killed at least 300 in the crackdown that followed, according to Amnesty International, and slowed the protests\u2019 momentum by blocking or disrupting the internet.<\/p>\n

The internet outages have now returned. To help Iranians access the internet, the Biden administration on Friday authorized technology companies to offer secure platforms and services inside Iran without risk of violating United States sanctions that normally prevent doing business with Iran. It also greenlit the export of private satellite internet equipment, such as the Starlink service offered by Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX, to Iran.<\/p>\n

But Iranians may face odds that are too great.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some stage, I think it\u2019ll become impossible for them to control these movements,\u201d Mr. Vaez said of the governing authorities. \u201cBut as of now, the system is bound to bring down its iron fist and try to nip this movement in the bud.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Iran Uprising<\/div>\n
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Protests Intensify in Iran Over Woman Who Died in Custody<\/div>\n
Sept. 21, 2022<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Cancels Public Appearances After Falling Ill<\/div>\n
Sept. 16, 2022<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A New President Takes Office in Iran, Solidifying Hard-Line Control<\/div>\n
Aug. 5, 2021<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Vivian Yee is the Cairo bureau chief, covering politics, society and culture in the Middle East and North Africa. She was previously based in Beirut, Lebanon, and in New York, where she wrote about New York City, New York politics and immigration. @<\/span>VivianHYee<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Farnaz Fassihi is a reporter for The New York Times based in New York.\u00a0Previously she was a senior writer and war correspondent for the Wall Street Journal for 17 years based in the Middle East. @<\/span>farnazfassihi<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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By Vivian Yee and Farnaz Fassihi, Front Page, Sunday New York Times, September 25, 2022 Amid growing repression, a sickly economy and bleak prospects, the death of one young woman was all it took. The 22-year-old woman emerged from the Tehran subway, her dark hair covered with a black head scarf and the lines of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13914"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13914"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13917,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13914\/revisions\/13917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}