by Fréderike Geerdink
It is two years ago that Jina (Mahsa) Amini was murdered in Tehran for not wearing her headscarf properly. We all remember the nationwide protests that followed, with both Kurds and Balochis leading the way with their resistance. It is depressing and infuriating to see how the crackdown against the Jin, Jiyan, Azadî (Woman, Life, Freedom) movement continues to this day. But even though the street protests have ended, the resistance has not. Eventually, the state suppression will backfire.
It’s been only two years, but let me refresh your mind. On 13 September 2022, the so-called ‘morality police’ in Iran’s capital city of Tehran arrested Jina Amini, a 21-year old Kurdish woman from Saqqez (Seqiz), Kurdistan province. She was visiting Tehran with her family. The ‘morality police’ judged that Jina was not wearing her headscarf properly. They arrested her.
Morality
Jina’s story started to draw attention soon after that, when photos were published of her laying in a hospital bed connected to machines, fighting for her life. She clung onto life for three days, but her injuries were too severe and on 16 September, she died. The regime has been telling lies about what happened ever since. Footage emerged of Jina collapsing, reportedly in a ‘morality class’. The authorities claimed it was due to a ‘pre-existing condition’, but the family said their healthy daughter didn’t have any pre-existing condition.
There was outrage over Jina’s death, but the protests only really started after her family bravely defied the authorities and not only held a public funeral but also turned it into a protest. Thousands of people attended, many women removed their headscarves and shouted: “We will not forgive. We will not forget. Death to the dictator!” Afterwards, masses took to the governor’s office to demand those responsible for Jina’s death would be brought to justice. The police used teargas to disperse the crowd and thirteen people were injured.
Wildfire
From Kurdistan, the protests spread over the whole of Iran like wildfire. For months on end, people demanded the end of the regime. Women and girls took off their headscarves, danced with their hair uncovered – especially in Kurdish cities these scenes were incredible, with women dancing around fires on the streets, singing Kurdish songs. Schoolgirls chased representatives of the regime away from their schools, men and women stood together to try to overthrow the suffocating system. In Baluchistan in the south, thousands of people protested after Friday prayers week after week, month after month, demanding their rights.
It all turned grim, of course, due to the regime suppressing the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement – ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’, as the Kurdish slogan goes. The police shot at people with live ammunition, often aiming at their eyes and blinding them, people were brutally beaten up and thousands of protestors were arrested and tortured, death penalties were carried out. The suppression was so fierce, that eventually, the movement on the streets subsided.
Aspirations
I added ‘on the streets’ there for a reason. That a lust for life and freedom is no longer expressed via street protests, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist anymore. After all, before 16 September 2022, there hadn’t been protest for years either, but suddenly, something happened that was just too much and the lingering aspirations of the people burst out.
The state seems to think that it helps to unabatedly harrass, prosecute and hang people to make sure they will not rise up again. Amnesty International has meticulously reported on the latest state of affairs, and it’s a truly horrific read. A ‘war on women and girls’ was unleashed, with more laws to enforce the headscarf and heavier penalities for violating those laws, and an increase of the use of the death penalty as punishment, but also as intimidation of the population. Families of protestors who were severly injured or murdered, are not only denied answers and justice, but are relentlessly harrassed as well.
Repression
But of course, all this won’t help. On the contrary. It was for a reason that two years ago, the fiercest protests broke out in the Kurdish provinces in the northwest of Iran and in the province of Sistan and Baluchistan in the southeast, bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan. Kurds and Baluchis have been the groups that have faced the most repression since for ever, not just from the current Islamic regime but also from the Pahlavi regime before 1979. Being both ethnic and religious minorities – they are both in general Sunni Muslims, not Shia – they bear the heaviest brunt of a fundamental lack of freedom.
This means that they have the least to lose and the most to win from radical change away from the nationalist-Islamic dictatorship. The harsher the suppression, the deeper the longing for change will be felt. In other words: slowly but surely, the regime is digging its own grave.
At some point in the future, this longing for freedom will explode, and the regime will die. Please, let that be rather sooner than later. Both now and in that brighter future, Jina Amini will continue to be the people’s heroine.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan.
