The howls, hoarse and heartbreaking, pulverize the calm of this winter Saturday afternoon. At the foot of the offices of Radio-Canada, in Montreal, a dozen demonstrators howled their anger against the Iranian regime, in an attempt to mobilize media attention on the subject.
For five long minutes, those present, of Iranian origin and mostly women, shouted with rage. The scene is scary. One of them prostrates herself, kneeling on a cardboard box; others burst into tears. The title of the performance? “Anger is untranslatable. »
“We are angry and we are screaming. There is no need for translation for that”, articulates Soorena Noorai. The voice seized by emotion, the tears gathering in the corner of the eyes, the Canadian-Iranian tells how he felt during the five minutes that lasted the performance, in which he participated. “It was as if I heard the prisoners in Iran. »
Since the murder of Mahsa Amini last September, the anger of Iranian men and women has been palpable. The young woman was beaten to death because she did not wear her hijab to the liking of the local morality police. Since then, thousands of his fellow citizens have revolted, sometimes risking their lives.
Iran Human Rights estimates the number of people killed in the repression of demonstrators at 458, while the United Nations speaks of 14,000 arrests.
” [Le changement] will only go through the overthrow of the regime,” insists Mina Favar, a Montrealer born and raised in Iran. “We no longer want political Islam,” she continues. What is happening is a secular, feminist revolution. Like a few dozen other people, the young woman attended the short performance, a few meters from the entrance to the new Maison de Radio-Canada, at the corner of René-Lévesque and Papineau streets.
“We protest against the passivity of the media and national and international authorities which do not cover the situation in Iran properly,” explains one of the organizers as to the choice of the place to hold the performance. He preferred to remain anonymous “for security reasons”.
After a few emotional minutes spent chanting slogans, such as “Woman, Life, Freedom”, the demonstrators slowly disperse in the winter cold.
“Anger doesn’t need words,” continues the organizer. It can be expressed by shouting. »