Page 82 - bneMag Dec22

82 Opinion bne December 2022
Despite the authorities' warnings, a "40th-day" memorial event called for Mahsa Amini brought thousands to her hometown cemetery. / social media. TEHRAN BLOG
There’s no revolution on the horizon, but something has broken
bne IntelliNews
Yesterday (October 26) brought the 40th day since the
death of Mahsa Amini, thus, for Iran, the traditional end
of the mourning period. The story by now is well known around the world. She collapsed and died in the custody of Tehran’s “morality police” who detained the 22-year-old for
a loose wearing of the hijab, or headscarf, that, they claimed, breached the country’s Islamic dress code. Amini’s death has so far unleashed more than six weeks of turmoil across the country. Anti-regime protests have fundamentally shifted the bounds of what is and what’s not possible in the Islamic Republic.
On the 40th day of mourning, thousands were seen marching to the graveyard where Amini, an Iranian-Kurdish woman, was buried in Kurdistan province. They marched despite warnings by local officials that people should stay away. Security forces reportedly opened fire. Yet the crowds did not flee. The memorial proceeded.
Such defiance is now almost commonplace. A new dynamic has been born in Iran. More than 200 young people, at least,
www.bne.eu
are thought to have lost their lives in the security crackdown. But when it come to the Islamic powers that be, the spell appears to have been broken.
Hopes inside Iran – and among the millions of the Iranian diaspora in places like Canada, Germany and Australia – have been high that the clerical regime of 42 years might finally
be toppled. But recent reports indicate that the numbers
now venturing on to the streets to protest are in the low thousands, rather than the millions seen in 2019, when a sudden price hike in the price of Iran’s extremely affordable gasoline triggered anger amid growing economic hardship.
Nevertheless, the protest movement, despite lacking the numbers to bring down the Ebrahim Raisi government
and the nearly-all-powerful overarching theocratic power structure led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has persisted, much to the authorities’ surprise.
In a sense, the situation has moved the goal posts. The past six weeks in fact appear to have given both women and men