Iran

“ There was no question in our minds that this was the first step to suppress us and we should stand up to it as both women and as revolutionaries.” Said Haideh Daragahi, a lecturer at Tehran University in 1979. During the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9, women stood shoulder-to-shoulder with men, and toe-to-toe against the Shah’s regime in mass demonstrations and on the barricades. The revolution stood for democracy, liberty and equality against a dictatorship that had been installed in a military coup in 1953. It was a moment of hope for progressives, the organised left, the workers’ movement...

A SPIRIT OF UNITY Iranian protest slogans are radical. They don’t beat about the bush. One that’s stuck with me from the current women’s movement in Iran is this: agar baa ham yekee nasheem, yekee yekee koshté meesheem. If we don't become one, one by one we will be killed. It’s a fitting mantra for a movement with remarkable longevity and global reach. The sentiment of unity has been key to the ability of protest movements to oppose the Islamic regime. In recent months, across boundaries of gender, age, class, ethnicity and border, the Iranian people have taken to the streets together. This is...

After talk at the start of December, even from hardliners such as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, about repealing the compulsory hijab law, the Iranian state is now concentrating hard on re-establishing its fascistic religious order, forcing women who had begun to live a little more freely to obey its rules. In 1983, the Islamic regime passed a law making it mandatory for women to wear the hijab in public. Women breaking this law can be imprisoned for up to 60 days, fined or sentenced to up to 78 lashes with a whip. In fact the Islamic regime’s rule is even more stifling and burdensome than...

The mass street protest movement in Iran, which followed the murder in custody of a young Iranian-Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, on 16 September, has subsided somewhat since early December. The human rights group HRANA reports that 519 protesters have been killed by the regime so far and 111 are under “impending threats of a death sentence”. Nearly 20,000 people have been detained during the protests. Scores of security personal and Islamist militia members have also died. Four protesters are now known to have been executed. Most recently Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini...

The clerical-fascist regime in Iran is still unable to crush the mass protest movement which erupted after the killing of 22-year old Mahsa / Jina Amini by the “morality police” in Tehran, in September. Women-led protests have demanded the abolition of the law which mandates women to cover their hair. More broadly Iranians are objecting to a barbaric, patriarchal and repressive state which narrowly restricts social life, and widespread poverty. The main slogan is “Women, life, freedom!” Nightly protests continue across the country. The Iranian state has used enormous violence against the...

On Saturday 3 December Iran’s attorney general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri claimed that, “both parliament and the judiciary are working [on the issue of the mandatory headscarf law for women]”, to discuss if the law needs any changes. A review team met on Wednesday 30 November with the “Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution”, “and we will see the results in a week or two,” the attorney general added. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi also claimed on Saturday that Iran’s “Islamic foundations” were constitutionally entrenched, but went on to say, “there are methods of implementing the...

Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s first supreme leader, once said: “If the Islamic revolution is to have no other result than the veiling of women, then that is enough...” The concept of female modesty, whether motivated by women as tempters, or as requiring protection, is inseparable from the segregation and subordination of women. The compulsory hijab is a visible sign of the oppression of women in Iran but not its totality. There are no legal protections against domestic violence, sexual harassment, unequal pay, or discrimination in work. Women are banned from riding bikes, or singing or dancing...

On 12 November, a Tehran court sentenced a protester to death for “enmity against God”, following a 6 November vote in the clerical-controlled Parliament to deploy the death penalty against rebels. Since Mahsa Amini’s murder on 16 September mass protests have continued across the country, often led by young women. The main slogans of the movement are, “Women, life, freedom,” “Death to [the Supreme Leader since 1989] Khamenei”, “Death to the dictator.” Demonstrators interviewed by independent journalists also objected to widespread corruption and money being spent on expensive interventions...

On Wednesday 9 November we are holding a solidarity meeting in London with Iranian socialist feminists speakers. More here . A new wave of student strikes swept Iran on the weekend 5-6 November. The protest movement has been continuing in the face of violent suppression by the Iranian state. Hundreds of people have been killed so far by security forces. Sonia Mohamadi, a workers’ and women’s rights activist from Iran and a member of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran Hekmatist Official Line, talked to me. “The killing of Mahsa Amini by the Morality Police of the Islamic Republic of Iran was...

Despite its appalling record on women’s rights, Iran is home to some excellent films by female film directors. Persepolis (2007) is a mainly black-and-white animation directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parranoud, adapted from the graphic novel of the same name by Satrapi. The main character Marjane, “Marji”, grows up witnessing the downfall of the Shah and the takeover by Ayatollah Khomeini, who introduces an increasingly oppressive fundamentalist regime. Marji rebels. She buys a “Punk is not dead!” T-shirt and listens to western rock music tapes, all purchased on the black market. Her...