Sixteen-year-old Nika Shakarami was cheered by other protesters as she joyously burned the hijab (scarf) that she (and all Iranian women) had been forced to wear in public since she was nine years old. Shortly afterward, she was murdered by security forces/police who smashed her skull, breaking her teeth and dislocating her cheekbone. They kept her death a secret from her frantic family for 10 days before delivering her battered body.
Nika Shakarami, 16-year-old from Tehran who burned her hijab in a protest for Mahsa Amini, then was chased and beaten to death by armed security forces September 20, 2022. Photo: Wikipedia
Sixteen-year-old Sarina Esmailzadeh attended a high school for gifted students. Her May 22 video shows her innocence as well as her anguish about society’s problems. Exactly four months later, on September 22, she went to a protest and was chased and grabbed by Iran’s security thugs. They savagely beat her with batons over and over, fracturing her skull to where she bled to death.
Sarina Esmalizadeh
These are but two of the victims of the murderous crackdown unleashed by the religious rulers of Iran’s theocratic Islamic Republic1 in an attempt to crush the heroic uprising by people across Iran, now in its fifth week.
According to Iran's Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), 240 protesters have been killed, including 32 minors, and close to 8,000 have been arrested in protests that have taken place in 111 cities and towns and some 73 universities across Iran.2
Collage: Amnesty International
These protests had initially erupted after Mahsa Amini, age 22 and from Iran’s oppressed Kurdistan area, was brutally arrested for “improper hijab” and ended up dying in the hospital on September 16.
For the four weeks since, people—especially women—have risen up in rebellion, from marching and chanting, to throwing rocks, to burning down government buildings, to defacing or tearing down images of the Islamic Republic’s founder Ayatollah Khomeini, its current “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Khameini, and its president, Ebrahim Raisi.3 “Death to the dictator,” “Down with the Islamic Republic,” “Woman, life, freedom” or simply the name “Mahsa Amini” are ringing out from Tabriz in the northwest to Sistan and Baluchistan in the southeast.
Burning the hijab and waving it in defiance has become a liberating symbol of the bold rebellion of Iran’s women against the medieval oppression imposed on them under fundamentalist Islamic law or Sharia. Teenage women have boldly stepped to the front of the uprising including physically fighting back against harassment and attacks by security forces/police.
Time reports, “The demonstrations have been widespread on university campuses, but younger school children are also getting involved and being targeted by security forces.”
The regime has gone after these students and youth—particularly young women and girls—with a vengeance to regain control over a society rooted in the oppression of women: last week authorities revealed “…that the average age of detained protesters was 15.”
Many are young girls and women leading the mass protests, including crowds joyfully burning the hijab. The regime has struck back by sending some of high school students they’ve arrested in protests to “psychiatric centers for education and behavioral reform” that are nothing but camps for state-sanctioned child abuse such as interrogations.
By October 13, it was reported that at least 28 Iranian children under 18 had been killed for protesting.4
A “Nothing to Lose” Generation
Video after online video shows high school girls challenging authority, stomping on or flipping off pictures of the Islamic Republic’s “holy rulers.” In at least one province, Hamedan, authorities complained that over 80 percent of arrestees are under 25 years old.
As school opened in early October, high school and college campuses became another site for organized collective protests—whether shouting down regime speakers, writing on walls, chanting in school yards, or holding sit-ins and walkouts.
At Sharif University, for example, student protesters were surrounded, locked in and shot at. Supportive professors were violently attacked and threatened with death. Some students described it as a war zone. Instead of giving up, the attack “…has sparked a wave of solidarity protests at many university campuses, with videos circulating of students raising their fists in the air and chanting their support for the students at Sharif.”5
This inspiring uprising is unfolding in a very complex and rapidly developing situation. Iran is a complicated society with many different class and social forces, and nationalities. And among those in rebellion against the theocratic regime, there are a wide range of different programs, including some forces outside of Iran who seek to make this situation serve their interests. This includes sections of the Iranian exile community in places like the U.S. and Europe, the U.S. imperialists, and others.
It is very urgent that people clearly demand that the U.S. imperialists, who are not and will never be a force for good in the world, stay out of Iran—in direct opposition to those now lobbying America’s rulers to “do more” and/or intervene “on behalf of the protesters.”
See also:
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The Potential for Revolution and the Urgent Need to Spread Analysis, Leadership of Communist Party of Iran—Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
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Massacres in Kurdistan and Baluchistan:
Hands of Iran’s Rulers Dripping with Blood -
Petrochemical Workers Strike, Join Protests—Demand Freedom for Political Prisoners
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For the U.S. role in Iran
The Potential for Revolution and the Urgent Need to Spread Analysis, Leadership of Communist Party of Iran—Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
In order to eliminate the source of all forms of oppression and exploitation, to bury the veil and oppression of women, to eradicate poverty, misery and hunger, to eliminate national oppression and cultural and political tyranny, to save the environment, we have to overthrow the decadent Islamic Republic and over its ruins build an entirely different economic and social system, namely the “New Socialist Republic of Iran.”
– “Goodbye Garbage,” Atash/Fire journal of the Communist Party of Iran, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
The youth and women-driven rebellion in Iran shows great potential for a real revolution to overthrow the oppressive Islamic regime. This should serve as a clarion call for all who hate injustice to stand with, and emulate. In this fluid and volatile situation—fraught with dangers and opportunities—there are necessarily many different forces in the mix vying for influence and leadership, with different political and ideological thinking, programs and goals.
In this situation scientific leadership is decisive, for the fundamental interests of the masses of Iran to come to the fore, to be free from oppression and exploitation—leadership that bases itself on a scientific understanding of the problem/solution, of the nature of the system responsible for the horrors inflicted on the masses, the way out through a thoroughgoing revolution, and leading the whole process towards this goal. The Communist Party of Iran, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (CPI [MLM]), which bases itself on the new communism of Bob Avakian, is working to give revolutionary leadership in this fluid and volatile situation, through twists and turns and in contrast to other programs which aim to or will ultimately leave the underlying system intact, even if under new rulers. It is urgent that their works—statements and articles—be spread far and wide in Iran and internationally, and that more and more people join in this effort and support it.
Statements from the CPI (MLM) can be found in Farsi at cpimlm.org, and in English at revcom.us, including:
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Goodbye Garbage!
From Atash/“Fire” #131, Journal of the CPI-MLM -
From the Communist Party of Iran, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist:
Revolution Nothing Less!
Journal of Fire No. 131, October 2022 -
The Burial of the Compulsory Hijab, the Burial of the Integration of Religion with the State Has Begun! Let's Finish It!
September 23, 2022, Communiqué of the Communist Party of Iran (MLM.)
Massacres in Kurdistan and Baluchistan:
Hands of Iran’s Rulers Dripping with Blood
The Iranian regime is aggressively trying to cover up its horrendous crimes and prevent the world from understanding the blood that’s being spilled by these Islamic fundamentalists to maintain their oppressive rule.
This past week, the New York Times and the Center for Human Rights in Iran posted important exposures of the carnage that’s taken place in Baluchistan in the southeast of Iran and in Kurdistan in the northwest. Both are home to oppressed nationalities who’ve been disproportionately oppressed, impoverished, and imprisoned since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979, and are now being disproportionally targeted and murdered.
The following is an excerpt of a New York Times analysis of witness testimony and videos of a massacre that took place in late September in Zahedan, Baluchistan, during Friday Prayer, “with mats as stretchers and bodies piled in cars”:
Some of the wounded tried to crawl away to escape the gunfire. Others bled to death on prayer mats as people tried to drag them to safety.
But the snipers and officers kept pulling their triggers, firing bullet after bullet into men and young boys at a worship area where Friday Prayer had been underway.
The horrific scene unfolded on Sept. 30 in Zahedan, a city in southeastern Iran that is home to the ethnic Baluch minority, after a small group of worshipers emerged from the Great Mosalla prayer complex to confront security forces posted at a police station across the street.
The protesters chanted antigovernment slogans and threw rocks at the officers, prompting the security forces to fire indiscriminately into the crowd, according to witnesses. As the demonstrators scattered, the gunshots stalked their retreat back toward the complex, where thousands were still praying.
“It was a massacre I had only seen in movies,” said Jamshid, 28, a worshiper, who was reached by phone and identified himself only by his first name to avoid reprisals. “They started shooting as people still had their heads bowed in prayer.” Young men threw themselves in front of children and older people to shield them from the bullets, Jamshid said. “People had nowhere to go.”
The massacre, called “Bloody Friday” by residents, represents the most lethal government action since a crackdown began against nationwide demonstrations a month ago. Sixty-six to 96 people were killed over the course of the next several hours, according to local and international human rights groups, including Amnesty International.6
The Center for Human Rights reported on October 10 that at least four people were reportedly killed and more than 100 injured on October 9 in the oppressed province of Kurdistan:
Videos shared online by the Norway-registered Hengaw human rights organization showed heavy gunfire and explosions in the city of Sanandaj, Kurdistan Province on October 9, with a caption stating that the city was being “heavily shelled.”
Hengaw also reported violence in the village of Salas-Babajani, near the border with Iraq, and identified Arin Muridi, 22, as a civilian who died after being shot there “in the chest and neck by government forces.”7
Petrochemical Workers Strike, Join Protests—Demand Freedom for Political Prisoners
Iran’s prisons were crowded with political prisoners in deplorable conditions before this uprising. Now Iran’s prisons are filled with the new crowd of recent protesters.
In the second week of October, workers in key economic centers of Iran actively joined the protests. In a message declaring their intentions that should be spread everywhere inside and outside Iran, they state unequivocally:
….we once again express our solidarity with the people’s protests on the streets against the killing of Mahsa and Mahsas, and against the suppression of their rightful protests. We emphasize that those arrested during recent protests and all political prisoners must be immediately released, the repressive forces should be recalled from the streets, and the killers of Mahsa and others during this period must be put on trial.
These strikes represent the deepening of the current uprising to new sections of society and how many are raising their heads not simply for better wages and conditions for themselves, but for a better world. This spirit is a real achievement of this uprising in Iran that must be supported and spread worldwide.8
For the U.S. role in Iran see:
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Iran Uprising Enters 4th Week: Masses Respond with Great Courage — Regime Responds with Depraved Bloodshed — U.S. Responds with Hypocrisy, Maneuvering for Advantage, revcom.us, October 10
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Courageous Uprising In Iran: How Did Things Get to This Point? Did the U.S. Have Anything to Do With It? revcom.us, September 26, 2022
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American Crime Case #98: 1953 CIA Coup in Iran: Torture and Repression – Made in the U.S.A., revcom.us, May 16, 2016
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Background to Confrontation: The U.S. & Iran: A History of Imperialist Domination, Intrigue and Intervention - Part 4: Iran in the 1970s: Oil Boom, Breakneck Development, Seething Discontent, by Larry Everest, updated October 9, 2022