Page 83 - bneMag Dec22

bne December 2022
Opinion 83
in the theocratic country of 85 million a more generous goal to aim at. To quell some anger, the clerics quite early on pulled the morality police from the streets of Tehran. They are gone, at least for now. Women are increasingly spotted breaking the rules. They walk through the city without the obligatory hijab and manteau that have been standard for most middle-class liberal women for around two decades. The question now is whether the change will be allowed to last.
Waves of protests
Since taking control of Iran in 1979, the clerical establishment has faced several waves of protests. When the rule that women must cover up in public was established in 1980 just after the revolution, women opposed it – as many photos from the time show – but the surge of power ridden by the hardline Islamists proved too much to resist. Across the intervening four decades, thousands of women have been rounded up and subjected to detention – and worse – for breaching the rules on attire.
Previous popular protests against the regime have been based on politics or economics, like those in 2019. But the current unrest, which truly got going in mid-September after Amini was buried, is about the personal domain, the freedom of the individual, or at least the freedom of the determined women that have led so many of the Amini protests. And the sheer ferocity of the demonstrations and actions of protest undertaken by these women against the male patriarchy has rocked Iran’s male masters. The country’s previous status quo, the previous so-called “normality”, has to some degree dissolved. It would be a foolhardy regime that attempted to stubbornly piece it all back together again in indecent haste.
“The sheer ferocity of the demonstrations and actions of protest undertaken by these women against the male patriarchy has rocked Iran’s male masters”
The unique impact of these protests is seen in how women and girls as young as 12 have come out to demonstrate against the establishment run by Khamenei. The unrest has crossed ethnic and social barriers that were left untouched by previous protests. The talk is of Generation Z – the bulk of those protesting have been aged 16-24. Sadly, the dead are thought to include at least 23 children.
Outrage is felt across many different social strata. Protesters reflect on how the latest to die could have been their
daughter, sister or girlfriend, or son, brother or boyfriend. They think back to Amini, they consider how it is that a woman can be harangued or worse by the state simply for showing her hair. The slogan “Women, life, freedom” has become a mantra; it recalls how the French refer to their “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”.
Digitally entwined economy
The maturity of social media in Iran plainly played a big factor in sparking the protests. But shutting down the online world in Iran is not such a simple solution for officials anymore, for the economy has become digitally entwined, interlinked, with the online world. Internet throttling and shutdowns are costing the purveyors of e-commerce – and in Iran, there are a huge amount – losses that in many cases threaten to prove fatal. In the backlash, e-retailers have joined social media celebrities in decrying the top officials for the blunt instrument they have used in disconnecting Iran from the internet.
The impact on Iran’s digital economy has been so immense that the country’s chamber of commerce has said the damage to the economy could be running at $30mn a day. The great number of retailers who rely on the no longer available Instagram continue to lose fortunes in revenues (the bulk
of these retailers are women who use the platform to sell wares and services including clothing and opportunities to eat in or out).
Iran’s government has become increasingly disconnected from the youth in recent years. There’s an inflexibility when it comes to perhaps budging an inch in terms of media freedom. A vacuum in the media space emerged decades ago, and it has been filled by expatriate television channels broadcast from London and Los Angeles (this is doubly painful for the regime when they see the Saudi funding).
The level of professionalism in the broadcasting and
other forms of communication, such as that seen with international social media platforms, brought about
a yearning among Iran’s young. Daily witnessing such freedoms is no easy thing. The youth nowadays clearly shun Iran’s official state media, the only domestic show in town. There’s little hope that its viewer numbers can ever recover.
For those born after the revolution, the unyielding stiffness of the authorities continues to drive migration to countries including Canada and the UK. Perhaps the migration has even proved something of a saviour for the regime – without it, the numbers available to take to the streets would be that much higher.
Accurate data on how many have left the country are not obtainable, but estimates in circulation talk about several millions, perhaps 10 million. Yet tone-deaf government has continued. Just perhaps, from now on, it will no longer be accepted.
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