Entering this clandestine cafe in Tehran, we meet an unveiled woman, a sign that we are safe from the gaze of the Revolutionary Guards. While the mullahs’ police crisscross the city, surveillance is everywhere, here young people manage to defy Islamic laws. “Mahsa” discusses the current situation freely, without veil, with a friend.
This 35-year-old activist chose this pseudonym in tribute to Mahsa Amini, the young woman who died in hospital on September 16, after her arrest by the morality police for an outfit that did not respect the strict dress code of the Republic. Islamic. Since then, despite the violence of the repression, demonstrations of solidarity have not weakened, and the capital has been living under extreme tension. “Ten days ago, remembers Mahsa, we could not imagine that the movement would take like that. It was unthinkable. It makes me so happy to feel alive again, when I’m on the street!”
“Before, when we demonstrated, we said ‘Don’t be afraid, we are all together’, but now fear has changed sides, and we chant: ‘Be afraid! Be afraid! We are all together’.”
“Mahsa”, an Iranian activistto “Special Envoy”
Her friend compares the condition of Iranian women to that of “Blacks in the 1960s in the United States (…). Like them, we are not allowed to enter certain places, for example in a stadium. We are deprived of many things. It is with this movement that we realized how much women were deprived of sport, cinema, art… how much we are not progressing because of these bans. It’s a form of censorship” .
Iranian women are not alone in mobilizing: more and more men are showing solidarity. One of them, aged 27, expresses his support for those who revolt and his rejection of any discrimination against women. Despite the risks (according to various NGOs, at least 76 people have already been killed), he took part in a demonstration last week.
“What happened to Mahsa Amini is a spark so that we can all express our anger, and say all our problems. We are not fighting for our generation: we have a duty to reveal these problems so that the future generations don’t have to go through all that we are going through.”
A young Iranianto “Special Envoy”
Excerpt from “Iran: freedom unveiled”, a report to see in “Special Envoy” on September 29, 2022.
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