I was born in Iran, came to the United States in 1981 with a suitcase, $100 on my call, and no English proficiency. I am fortunate to have incredibly selfless parents in Iran who abandoned me and a loving aunt and uncle here in the United States. , to build a better life for myself.
As you may have heard or seen, the government of the Islamic Republic brazenly and indiscriminately kills its citizens: men, women and youth just to protest their liberation from oppression and tyranny.
Protest is the right of each and every nation. But the Islamic Republic kills protesters with batons and bullets, and for other smart people around the world, silence allows those abuses to continue and puts more innocent lives at risk. Countless Iranians have already lost their physical form or died from wanton beatings, torture and rape. Since I came to the United States in 1981, I have not witnessed such widespread and committed opposition to the Islamic Republic’s regime as it does today in Iran. While Iran has become accustomed to mass protests to the max once a decade, neither the student protests of 1999, the Green Movement of 2009, nor even the recent peak protests of November 2019 compare in fervor or scale to the existing protests.
More importantly, for the first time since the creation of the theocracy in 1979, others are blatantly and fearlessly opposing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, 83. They are actively fighting to protect themselves from security forces while tearing down billboards and burning photographs. of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini.
As with oppressive regimes, the lack of transparency occasionally obscures the actual number of protesters killed, adding women and children, as it is likely to be much higher than reports suggest. They were killed with batons on their heads and bullets in their necks. They fled for their lives. But the maximum novel component of these protests is that they were led by women.
The killing in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman arrested for getting to the point wearing a hijab, the moment of the powder keg that triggered this new uprising. Women took to the streets, cutting and waving their veils and setting them on fire. They cut their hair in protest, even though they know they will be arrested and sent to mental rehabilitation centers, beaten, raped and even killed. the Islamic Republic”.
The movement’s slogan, Woman-Life-Freedom, is an opposition to a regime built on the basis of being anti-woman, pro-martyrdom and repressive.
In this photo taken through a person not hired through The Associated Press and received through APArray. [ ] Outside Iran, demonstrators chant slogans at a protest against the death of a woman detained by police in central Tehran, Iran, on September 21, 2022.
To be clear, this uprising is rarely just about draconian dress codes. However, the obligatory hijab has the ultimate visual symbol of the subjugation of Iranian women. Islamic Republic, which maintained its strength not only through the segregation and oppression of women in Iran, but also through the denial of freedom of expression, settlement and assembly of all Iranians, as well as fair trials and due process.
Please make no mistake. The Islamic Republic is a totalitarian formula that uses forced confessions and torture against its citizens to stifle dissent. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2022, Iran ranks 143rd out of 146 countries. The Islamic Republic is an example of why countries with maximum legislation and discriminatory attitudes are also experiencing the most turmoil, undermining foreign peace and security.
So, let’s face some myths, which unfortunately have been perpetuated not only through regime officials in Iran, but also through global experts. The first, that compulsory hijab is a cultural factor and that the rest of the world does not interfere, may simply not. Be further from the truth! You don’t have to subjugate other people to practice cultural norms, where schoolgirls challenge a life of indoctrination through status in classrooms, and other people take to the streets and tens of thousands to protest anything despite the threat of death at the hands of the authorities. You can safely assume that this is NOT a component of your culture.
Coercion that violates human rights has no place in any culture, and Iranians threaten everything for the global.
Another myth is that this regime is reformable. Unfortunately, the 43-year-old case about the Islamic Republic proved otherwise. Meanwhile, the Supreme Leader has consolidated all degrees of state coercive power. And Iranians and the world have been misled into thinking that presidential elections, which have never been free or fair, would make a difference for them. But elections in Iran are theater. The arrival to the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi, who has been a pillar of the oppressive state, implicated in crimes against humanity and whose leadership dates back to Iran in the 1980s, is evidence enough that a culture of impunity reigns ideally in Iran, and that theocracy is impervious to reform.
Like many exiled Iranians living abroad, I firmly believe that Iran’s long-term can only be written through its own people on its own streets. But no country can go through it alone in its quest for freedom and self-determination. If the rest of the world had not intervened, Nelson Mandela would have rotted in apartheid-era prisons in South Africa.
Every citizen of the world has an important role to play in helping nations in crisis. The Islamic Republic is not just a risk to its own people. Its human rights violations have one of its main exports. The regime’s catalogue of abuses in Iran and around the world is well documented. Throughout history, the regime of the Islamic Republic has taken foreign hostages and used them as political bargaining chips. It has intimidated, kidnapped and murdered dozens of dissidents beyond its borders, in addition to recent assassination attempts on prominent writers. and activists in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The prospect of existing protests against Iran from a theocracy to representative government may be just an ancient geopolitical factor. And the ultimate critical key to bringing stability to the Middle East. That is why strengthening global unity and regional capacity in the face of the Islamic Republic’s crimes under foreign law, adding human rights violations, is more critical than ever.
This is what other Iranians expect from the rest of us. Stop turning a blind eye to their suffering to satisfy our political goals. For decades, we have responded only to the symptoms of the Islamic Republic’s hostile activities aimed at reducing Iran’s nuclear capability. ambitions and regional aggression. But to address the cause, we will have to dedicate ourselves to intelligently supporting the democratic aspirations of other Iranians for an Iran that is more respectful and representative of its citizens.
What does it look like? First, we will have to come together to fight corruption and promote respect for human rights. And the existing crisis in Iran urgently forces us into the status quo of an independent foreign investigative mechanism into human rights violations in Iran, because there are no channels of justice. in national point of the country.
At a time when the security forces of the Islamic Republic state are once again using disproportionate violence against protesters, we will need to document these human rights violations and atrocities with mechanisms that are able to hold perpetrators accountable. Only with this point of global defense, coordination and accountability and justice for other Iranians can we confront the Islamic Republic as the cause of our nuclear and geopolitical concerns.
But one thing is clear. Human rights violations on this scale are a symptom of deep political unrest and illegitimate rule through its people. Human rights are related in detail to respect for the rule of law, and there can be no long-term smart governance without the rule of law. . Good law-abiding governance makes regional neighbors and cooperative members of the foreign community larger.
While the Islamic Republic does not constitute Iran’s 2500 years of history and culture, here is a short poem, Bani Adam, meaning “son of Adam” or “human beings” through the thirteenth-century Persian poet Sa’adi Shirazi, who is also inscribed on the front of the United Nations building:
Original poem, Bani Adam, “son of Adam” or “human beings” in Farsi, in the thirteenth century. [ ] Persian poet Sa’adi Shirazi.
Human beings are members of a whole, in the sense of an essence and a soul.
If a member is grieving with grief, worried members will stay.
If you have no sympathy for human pain, the human call cannot be remembered!
The global network needs what the brave protesters in Iran need. It is time for us to stop encouraging the Islamic Republic of Iran and start supporting the freedom-loving Iranian people.
This publication was animated through Nazanin Boniadi’s speech to the UN Security Council.