Mahsa Amini protests
and protests against the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran associated with the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini began on 16 September 2022 and carried on into 2023, but by spring 2023, the protests had largely subsided, ultimately leaving the political leadership unchanged and firmly entrenched in power. The protests were described as "unlike any the country had seen before," the "biggest challenge" to the government, and "most widespread revolt," since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Amini was arrested by the Guidance Patrol on 13 September 2022 for allegedly violating Iran's mandatory hijab law by wearing her hijab "improperly" while visiting Tehran from Saqqez. According to eyewitnesses, she was severely beaten by Guidance Patrol officers. She subsequently collapsed, was hospitalized and died three days later. As the protests spread from Amini's hometown of Saqqez to other cities in the Iranian Kurdistan and throughout Iran, the government responded with widespread [|Internet blackouts], nationwide restrictions on social media usage, tear gas and gunfire.
Although the protests have not been as deadly as those in 2019, they have been "nationwide, spread across social classes, universities, the streets schools". At least 551 people, including 68 minors, had been killed as a result of the government's intervention in the protests, as of 2023. Before February 2023 when most were pardoned, an estimated 19,262 were arrested across at least 134 cities and towns and 132 universities.
Female protesters, including schoolchildren, have played a key role in the demonstrations. In addition to demands for increased rights for women, the protests have demanded the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, setting them apart from previous major protest movements in Iran, which have focused on election results or economic woes.
The government's response to the protests and its "brutal and disproportionate use of force against peaceful protesters and children" was widely condemned, but Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed the unrest as "riots" and part of a "hybrid war" against Iran created by foreign enemy states and dissidents abroad.
On 2 February 2024, the UN Human Rights Council's Fact-Finding Mission released a report which found the Iranian regime committed systematic crimes against humanity.
Background
Condition of women and the Islamic Republic
Among the primary tenets of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution was the need to overthrow the anti-Islamic, oppressive and foreign power-controlled monarchy of Iran. The secular, modernizing Pahlavi dynasty, founded by Reza Shah in the early twentieth century, had placed the improved treatment of women at the center of its project to modernize Iran. Reza Shah banned the wearing of hijab in public and admitted women to universities. During the reign of his successor and son Mohammad Reza Shah, restrictions on the wearing of hijab were lifted but women were granted suffrage, allowed to enter parliament, and "gained dramatically more rights in marriage".The Revolution rescinded the legal rights the Pahlavi Shahs granted women, removed restrictions on men's rights to polygamy and child marriage, and reversed Reza Shah's ban on hijab to make the complete covering of women's hair in public compulsory. Enforcement of the unpopular law was eased during the 2013–2021 tenure of moderate President Rouhani, but intensified under Rouhani's successor, the hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi.
At the same time as rights were taken away, some aspects of the lives of women and girls improved. Traditional pious Iranians—who had kept their daughters out of school during the Shah's era—now felt comfortable allowing their daughters to be schooled in an Islamic educational system. Enrollment of women in universities jumped from 3% in 1977 to 67% in 2015, according to the World Bank statistics. But many of the women who left home to study and developed new values and world views, struggled to secure jobs that matched their new competencies, and became less content with the Islamic Republic than their parents.
Protest movements under the Islamic Republic
The Mahsa Amini protests were preceded by several other political/social/economic protest movements in Iran, in 1999, 2009, 2011–2012, 2019–2020, and protests against compulsory hijab in 2017–18.Most recently were a series of protests in 2019, "Bloody Aban", sparked by a 50–200% increase in fuel prices. Like the Mahsa Amini protests, these protests eventually called for the overthrow of the government of the Islamic Republic and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Mahsa Amini's arrest and death in custody
Mahsa Amini, also Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, was arrested by the Guidance Patrol on 14 September 2022 because of an "improper hijab." The police were accused of beating her and inflicting a fatal head injury, after a CT scan confirmed that Amini had sustained head injuries, a claim denied by Tehran police. She was pronounced dead on 16 September.Protests
Protests started in Tehran as Mahsa Amini was being treated at a hospital there, and continued at her funeral in Saqqez, where hundreds of people reportedly gathered in defiance of official warnings and were fired upon when they shouted anti-regime slogans. Protests spread to the provincial capital. Internet service and mobile phone service were shut down, and the head of the Guidance Patrol was allegedly suspended. By 20 September there were unconfirmed social media videos showed anti-government protests in at least 16 of Iran's 31 provinces, and state media reported that three people had been killed in Kurdistan protests.Two weeks after the funeral, forty civilian were killed and many wounded in Zahedan in Sistan and Baluchestan province following Friday prayers, after protests sparked by reports of a police chief who had raped a 15-year-old girl in Chahbahar. A Mahsa Amini hashtag gained 52 million tweets.
By early December 2022, a "vague" statement made by the attorney general was interpreted by some in the Western press to mean that the hijab law was under review and that the Guidance Patrol might be disbanded. The report was later attacked as a "diversion tactic" by the regime.
The protests became more widespread than those of 2009, 2017, and 2019, encompassing even Islamic Republic power bases such as the holy cities of Mashhad and Qom, involving both urban middle classes and rural working areas. In addition, schoolgirls demonstrated in numbers for the first time.
By February 2023, the regime stated it had arrested tens of thousands of protesters.
According to France 24, by mid-March 2023 protests "had dwindled" across most of the country. On 13 March, the government claimed it had pardoned 22,000 citizens arrested for protesting.
Slogans and grievances
The signature slogan of the protests has been "Woman, Life, Freedom", which reflects the idea that "the rights of women are at the centre of life and liberty".The slogan was popularized during women's marches in Turkey in 2006 in the Kurdish Freedom Movement, and reflects the idea of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, that "a country can't be free unless the women are free."
Kurds emphasize the Kurdish origin of the slogan, and its connection to Mahsa Amini's Kurdish first name—Jina. Kurdish and minority rights are subjects of the protest—Kurds make up approximately 15% of Iran's population, are predominately Sunni Muslims, the regions they live are among the most impoverished in the country, the use of their languages is restricted, they account for nearly half of all political prisoners in Iran, and have felt much of the brunt of anti-protest attacks by the government who according to news reports, blamed the Kurds for the protest movement.
Other slogans collected by Iranwire early in the protests include comments against the Supreme Leader, the Basij, the Islamic Republic ; praise for Mahsa, and for the 20th century modernist monarch Reza Shah; and comments of defiance.
As demonstrated by the slogans and banners of the demonstrators, protesters appear to be demanding a wholesale change in government rather than just incremental reforms. Grievances expressed in the protest go beyond those of many previous Iranian protests, and beyond protesting Amini's death, demanding an end to the mandatory hijab, an end to the morality police, the Supreme Leader, the theocratic regime,
and to human rights violations perpetrated by Iran's Guidance Patrol.