Theocracy is not collapsing fast enough to save Iranian women

One year ago today, a horrific news story changed the entire trajectory of a repressive regime. Just as the immolation of a young Tunisian merchant, Mohamed Bouazizi, marked the start of the Arab Spring in 2010, the death of Mahsa Amini at the brutal hands of the moral police shook the foundations of theocracy in Iran.

It was September 13, 2022. While visiting Tehran, young Mahsa Amini was intercepted by the morality police because she was not wearing the obligatory veil “appropriately”. Unceremoniously arrested, violently hit in the head, she succumbed to her injuries on September 16 in hospital.

This sinister affair marks the beginning of a counter-revolution led by women, who tear off their veils, throw them away, burn them and shout in all the public squares of Iran their rage to live as free women, freed from a suffocating Islamo-military regime. The men are not left out and join the protest which is setting the country ablaze. In universities, they spontaneously tear down the partitions separating men from women to introduce bright diversity into the cafeterias.

The two journalists who broke the story to the world, Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, remain in prison. They risk the death penalty for investigating the death of the 22-year-old woman. Such simple gestures, taken for granted in our smooth democracies, are of incredible courage.

Report the facts. Shouting “Death to the dictator” in a demonstration. Tearing the veil from one’s head. Mix men and women. Dancing languorously on TikTok… It’s enough to get yourself arrested, imprisoned, beaten, tortured, executed.

According to the latest report from the NGOs Iran Human Rights and Ensemble Against the Death Penalty, Iran executed 582 of its citizens in 2022, an increase of 75% compared to the previous year. This is “the “the ultimate tool of intimidation and oppression by the Iranian regime.”

What about a year later? The mullahs’ bloodless regime is holding on by carrying out arrests by the thousands. Demonstrations are becoming rarer. Measures of harassment, intimidation and mass surveillance have intensified. Businesses that accept unveiled women have been closed. Women without a hijab are refused access to museums and taxis.

The moral police have been abolished by the regime, a very symbolic concession, but the repression of women continues through a series of measures, the most pernicious of which is denunciation, which pits the Iranian against his neighbor.

This relentless repression testifies more to the regime’s running out of steam than to its stability, but the mullahs have not said their last word. Since former President Donald Trump’s Republicans made the irreparable blunder of killing the US-Iran nuclear deal, the field has been clear for malicious actors in the Middle East . The fragile détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, under the auspices of Beijing, could well mark the emergence of what our colleague Guy Taillefer has described as “the international of repression”.

The Gulf countries could thus enter a mixed era of competition and cooperation on issues that bring them together: the open contestation of democracy and liberalism on an international scale, the active suppression of rights and freedoms on a global scale. internal, the exploitation of hydrocarbons for the benefit of China, in the face of the fight against climate change. The disengagement of the United States in the Middle East, under the influence of isolationist policies, leaves the field open for China to assume the role of armed peacemaker in this region of the world.

This new, still fragile alliance, within which Russia also plays its part, as well as the stifling of protest in the indifference of the international community clearly demonstrate the limits of the progression of the democratic ideals claimed by the Iranian insurgents. .

A mixture of conservatism and authoritarianism, these forces are obstacles to the “Women, Live Freedom!” movement. “. Tired of being the slaves of Islamists, Iranian women are still far from the day of their liberation.

Western countries have found no better way than economic sanctions to contain Iran, with mixed results. Combined with rampant corruption in Iran, these sanctions have the effect of placing nearly a third of the population below the poverty line. They fail to produce the desired effect, namely the collapse of the regime.

We are left to observe a catastrophe in slow motion. Women, especially young people who are educated and who lead the charge against oppression, will be the first to fall victim to the impossibility of rapprochement with Western democratic values.

The regime may be collapsing, but not quickly enough to spare young people who have the effrontery to demand freedom from a regime that is perverse in its relationship with women.

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