Thousands in the Streets This Past Week

The current uprising, triggered by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, burst forth on September 16, 2022 and has continued non-stop since then, with over 1,200 protests taking place so far in some 163 cities and 144 universities across Iran. (For an overview of the uprising, see, Iran, 100 Days and Counting: Righteous Mass Uprising Against Patriarchy and Oppression Rocks Fascist Theocracy, revcom.us, January 2, 2023.)

Over this past week (December 31-January 6) thousands of Iranians took to the streets in at least a dozen cities. They again defied the ruthless military and police power of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) which has arrested over 19,000 people and killed over 517—including 70 children! And now this fascist theocracy is stepping up its murderous campaign to stomp out this uprising which has posed the gravest internal threat to its continued rule in its 44-year existence.  

“The Islamic Republic … needs intimidation and executions” to Survive

As we go to press, the regime has executed—by hanging—two more protesters on January 6: Mohammad Mehdi Karami, 22, and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, 39. These are state-sanctioned lynchings, carried out without legal rights or due process, aimed at terrorizing and demoralizing the Iranian people into submission.²

This comes in the wake of its executions of two other protesters in December. In a crude and cruel act of state murder, one of those young men was hung in public from a construction crane. And as we reported last week as many as 100 protesters are either charged with or have been convicted on charges that carry the death penalty.³

A human rights activist commented that “The Islamic republic, which has not been able to control the protests after 109 days, needs intimidation and execution to continue its survival.”

This includes going after prominent people such as athletes, actors, and others with broad public influence. On January 4, the Center for Human Rights in Iran reported that at least 16 “women and male athletes have been shot and killed, sentenced to death by kangaroo courts, disappeared and tortured after being arbitrarily detained for supporting the protests.”

Marjan Jangjou, a rock climber, disappeared after being arrested in November. The IRI refuses to respond to her family’s inquiries about what happened. Her friends are now searching cemeteries for unmarked graves! Mohammad Ghaemi, a soccer player, was cornered in a dead-end alley during a protest and shot in the back of the head. On December 26, the IRI forced down a plane in order to remove the wife and daughter of veteran soccer star Ali Daei. And on January 6, celebrity chef Navab Ebrahimi was arrested and his café shut down for “something to do with his Instagram story.”

The Uprising Continues

In spite of all the repression, resistance continues and the gulf between the widely hated regime and millions of Iranians continues to deepen. The number of street protests has ebbed and flowed, but the “Center for the Study of War” (a U.S. imperialist think tank that reports daily on Iran) commented on January 6 that since September “we have yet to record a day without at least one protest” of significant size. In the face of the repression people are showing great courage, and are also wrestling with questions being very sharply posed: how to carry forward the struggle, and get rid of the regime. Some are also agonizing over what socio-economic system will replace the current one.

Many student activists today say that in the past the student movement was basically about reforming the system. But faultline contradictions in Iran have been deepening. These include the Islamic Republic’s vicious subjugation of women, its suffocation and suppression of intellectual, political, and cultural life, its destruction of the environment, and the heartless workings of its imperialist-dominated capitalist system which has forced many millions in poverty. “We are well aware that as soon as protests stop, they’ll go back to their maximum pressure again,” one student said. “Our main purpose is to eliminate this system altogether.”⁴

There were nationwide protests on December 31, 2022. In Tehran a crowd of protesters at the Grand Bazaar faced off against a large detachment of security forces wielding clubs, tear gas and plastic bullets. In the conservative city of Najafabad, mainly female students took to the streets chanting “This homeland will not thrive before the [ruling] mullahs are dead.”

Workers at oil refineries in Abadan and in Arak went on strike, and shopkeepers in Gilan closed in support of the protests.

More protests were called for January 6-8. Initial reports indicate demonstrations (some on January 5) in at least a dozen cities. In Tehran, according to CPI-MLM Instagram, people gathered to mark the 40th day since the killing of a young protester.⁵ The security forces attacked but were driven back by the people.

People are developing creative ways to sustain the movement under the ruthless blows of the Islamic state apparatus. One has been the development of networks of “safe houses,” where some injured protesters, who would be arrested if they went to the hospital, are treated with medical supplies smuggled in. CNN reported recently on safe houses for known activists, enabling them to play a role in the uprising rather than leave the country. CNN described “An anonymous network of concerned citizens—‘ordinary people’ connected by a shared mission to protect protesters—who quietly support the movement from afar by offering their homes to activists in need.”

Intense Struggle in the Oppressed Nationality Areas

The most intense clashes at the moment are taking place in regions populated by Iran’s oppressed nationalities, in particular the Balochi areas in the Southeast and the Kurdish areas in the Northwest.

Baluchistan: “We don’t want a Daish-i governor!”

In Zahedan (capital of the province of Sistan-Baluchistan) there have been weekly protests after traditional Friday evening prayer services. The protests have been encouraged by the local Sunni Muslim imam, Mowlavi Abdolhamid, whose services call out some of the injustices committed by the government.⁶ The IRI seems determined to stamp out this resistance.

On December 25, Brigadier General Mohammad Karami was appointed as the new governor. Karami is the military commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard forces that occupy and repress Baluchistan! A week later authorities started making arrests of local people—perhaps 100 or more. The security forces applied direct pressure on Imam Abdolhamid to “end his weekly protests and critical sermons.”

Abdolhamid rejected this. During his January 6 sermon he said that “whether facing gallows or prison, we will stand firm until the end.” Thousands of people took to the streets. One popular chant: “We don’t want a Daish-i governor!” (“Daish” is another name for the group known in the U.S. as “ISIS”—extreme fundamentalist fanatical theocrats.)

Kurdistan: “We are children of fire and blood…”

In Kurdistan too, it is tit-for-tat between the Islamic Republic and the people. On December 31:

[I]n the Kurdish city of Javanrud … security forces shot and killed a 22-year-old protester, Borhan Eliasi, in clashes with protesters who were trying to convene to hold memorials for seven others who had been killed forty days earlier. …
Several others were shot and injured in Javanrud where people barricaded the streets Saturday morning when they were attacked. Angry protesters later stormed and ransacked two government banks, Keshavarzi and Sepah, and burned a road checkpoint kiosk.
Eliasi was buried a few hours later with thousands attending the burial ceremony at a nearby village cemetery. “We’re children of fire and blood; We will take revenge for our martyr,” participants chanted in Kurdish.⁷

In a Perilous Moment, Stand with the Iranian People

As the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) has pointed out, the struggle in Iran “is not an ‘Iranian’ event! It is a cry for liberation from oppressed humanity.”⁸

That means both learning from and spreading it, but also defending it. This is a perilous moment, both for the Iranian people’s struggle—under murderous fascist attack—and for the regime, unable so far to stop the uprising, and losing much of its legitimacy among millions in Iran and around the world.

There continue to be protests in support of the uprising by Iranians in the global diaspora. There has also been some important support from non-Iranian people, including worldwide outrage among people in the film and theater industries at the arrests of many Iranians artists. A video was recently posted, including by the Burn the Cage / Free the Birds movement, of prominent actors and others from around the world holding handmade signs saying #StopExecutionsInIran. “We stand with the people of Iran in their fight for freedom.”⁹

It is quite possible that such actions pushed the regime to step back from executing Kurdish rapper Saman Yasin, and to release actor Taraneh Alidoosti on furlough from Evin Prison.¹⁰

But this is still far short of what is needed and possible—for all people who oppose the oppression of women, fundamentalist religious rule, torture and repression to make your voices heard in support of the struggle and in defense of the thousands of political prisoners.

This is a time when people around the world need to step up—and in doing so help widen the crack in the oppressive world order that the Iranian people have opened. And as part of this we need to be vigilant in opposing any U.S. or imperialist moves or threats to once again dig their claws into Iran.  

And it is also worth thinking about these words of Taraneh Alidoosti. After the first execution of a protester, and shortly before her arrest, she posted a challenge to everyone still on the sidelines:

“Your silence means supporting oppression and oppressors.”

Think about it.