Protests in Iran: 5 things that have changed in the country after 50 days of demonstrations
Women have been at the forefront of protests in Iran over the past 50 days
The protests that began in Iran 50 days ago as a way to denounce violence against women have become the most serious challenge to the country's government since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The unrest began on September 16 in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old girl who had been detained by morality police in the city of Tehran for allegedly violating the country's strict rules, which require women to cover their hair with a hijab, or a head scarf.
Since then, protesters have continued to defy a deadly crackdown by security forces — the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) website says 298 people have been killed and more than 14,000 have been arrested in the protests that have spread to 129 cities to date. November 2nd.
Residents of Iran told the BBC the demonstrations had already brought at least five significant changes to daily life.
In recent weeks, many Iranian women have defied the rules about head coverings. Several were seen climbing onto dumpsters and cars, while waving their handkerchiefs in the air.
Social media is also full of women in public without headscarves, including well-known personalities such as actress Fatemeh Motamed-Arya. The scale of this public challenge is unprecedented in the history of the Islamic Republic.
Some posts even show images of young Iranian women with their heads uncovered near security forces, although officials insist the rules have not changed.
"Removing the veil is still against the law," Ali Khanmohammadi, a spokesman for Iran's morality police, told a news website on Oct. 30.
That hasn't stopped Iranian women from challenging the ban. A 69-year-old woman told the BBC that since the protests began, she has often left the house without wearing a headscarf.
"The other day I was walking down the street and I heard a car honking behind me. I turned around and saw a young woman without a headscarf," said the woman, who asked not to be identified in the report.
"She blew me a kiss and gave me a victory sign. So did I! In a matter of forty-odd days, the country has changed more than it has in forty-odd years."
Symbols on the walls and in the streets
Graffiti has been another tool used by protesters in Iran — here, a woman's shoe kicks a police officer below the words women, life and freedom.
João Fellet tries to understand how Brazilians reached the current degree of division.
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The current protests in Iran also stand out because of a "battle on public walls".
Seeing slogans in graffiti is now commonplace, as are videos on social media where people record themselves writing on walls. City councils cover the graffiti in paint, but they are fighting a battle that seems lost.
Most slogans target Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei — in an escalation of language rarely seen before — and attack Iran's theocratic regime, pointing out the secular nature of the protest movement.
But the real struggle for public spaces is taking place on the streets: protesters are ignoring rules that prohibit demonstrations, as well as tearing down or defacing government billboards with images and words of their own.
"People have created temporary zones where girls and women dance while the crowd cheers, where people chant slogans demanding an end to repression, get together and discuss which directions the movement should take," Iranian writer and activist Alex Shams told the BBC.
"The protests themselves have emerged as one of the most important spaces for Iranians to imagine a different kind of future."
strength of the young
Younger Iranians, especially schoolchildren, have played an unprecedented role in the current protests.
School-age children are among the most active groups in the protests. HRANA claims that more than 47 of them have died in the past 50 days.
Dead youths became prominent symbols of the demonstrations. Names like Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh have become popular buzzwords — and their images appear in graffiti.
It is the first time that younger Iranians are seen in this role during the protests.
Social media has many videos of schoolchildren (mostly girls) chanting anti-government slogans, tearing up pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, or replacing images in school textbooks with portraits of people killed during the crackdown.
A video widely shared on social media shows a group of young people shouting at a member of the security force who has come to their school to give a lecture – they tell him to "get out".
The challenge that overcomes fear
The Iranians have challenged security forces on a scale never seen before
On October 29, Hossein Salami, the head of the Revolutionary Guard, gave an ultimatum to the protesters.
"Don't take to the streets! Today is the last day of the riots," he told state media.
Even with the recommendation, there were more reports of protests and clashes with security forces on this date.
The BBC's Persian Service came across many stories of people who revealed a never-before-seen kind of challenge in the face of brutal repression.
A young woman who preferred to remain anonymous said she had left her son with his mother to participate in a protest.
"I was scared, but I must do this to give my son a better future."
Faravaz Favardini, an Iranian singer and activist who lives in Germany, also believes exasperation at the current situation across the country has fueled the protests.
"Everything is getting more expensive, there is a lot of repression", explains . "After what happened with Mahsa Amini, people realized that even those who weren't engaged in politics can be killed for nothing. I think that made a lot of people fight for hope."
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The protests appear to have brought together different segments of Iranian society.
A notable feature of these protests is how they seem to have brought together different parts of Iranian society, unlike previous movements.
The demonstrations that took place in 2009, after the results of that year's presidential elections, were led by the middle class. The 2019 revolt, on the other hand, mainly represented the desires of the poorest sectors of society in relation to fuel prices.
The current movement brought together several of Iran's ethnic groups, who went on to march together. And this union was also reflected in the slogans.
In the first protests after the death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian of Kurdish origin, the slogan of her native language "Jin, Jiyan, Azadi" ("Woman, Life and Freedom", in free translation) came to the fore.
There are now also versions of these slogans in Farsi, the most widely spoken language in Iran, and in Azerbaijani.
Alex Shams reckons that the government's claims that the protests could lead to ethnic separatism and civil war in Iran have failed to shake this unity of the movements.
"Solidarity between Iranians of different origins has been instrumental in fueling the protests and has broken down barriers of fear and suspicion. Together, they all refused to be enemies," he adds.
Previous demonstrations have not been able to bring about significant change in Iran, but Shams believes that this time the story could be different.
"The last few weeks have drastically changed people's perception of what is possible. And that in itself is a victory," he concludes.
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