The uprising of opposition to the despicable regime in Tehran fails like those in Hong Kong, Belarus, Egypt and Syria, but this time everything seems different.
In 2019-2020, millions of others took to the streets to oppose the repressive movements of an authoritarian regime. But eventually, their voices were silenced, their leaders imprisoned, and China took away their democratic rights, in the face of Western leaders who twisted their rights. hands.
In Belarus, nationwide protests erupted when a ruthless dictator stole the 2020 election. The UN said many others had been ill-treated, tortured and raped. But the dictator Alexander Lukashenko, supported by his detestable friend in Moscow, remains in force in a truculent manner.
In Myanmar, the army introduced a coup last year, replacing elected politicians with a military junta. Its chief, General Min Aung Hlaing, is accused of overseeing the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya minority; So far he has emerged unscathed.
It is a trend that is repeated with appalling frequency around the world. Just take a look at the Arab Spring “revolutions” in Syria and Egypt. The others rise, the others are crushed, and Western democracies weep, despite everything. Conform to the new old reality.
Is this the fate that now awaits young Iranian women who have bravely taken the initiative to challenge the latest murderous excesses of Tehran’s morally bankrupt regime?Like other countries, the Iranian revolution of 1979 defeated a tyrant, only to take his place.
However, the ongoing national protests today, which defy brutal repressions, are in various ways. While most appear to be led by young women and schoolgirls, with the support of young men, a wide diversity of ages, ethnic groups and social categories are represented.
The uprising has no leaders, organization or manifesto other than “Women, Life, Freedom,” a slogan that signals collective commitment to human rights, freedom of expression and democratic self-determination. No wonder this despicable regime perceives this.
Even more surprising, women show no fear. They refuse to be intimidated (or covered up). These young generations do not care about the Islamic Republic’s 43-year history of grand designs, damaged promises and bloody wars. For them, it is corrupt, anachronistic and irrelevant.
The riots also have nothing to do with “foreign conspiracies,” the regime’s repeated and general excuse for failure. It has everything to do with the high point of education, social media, globalized culture and the denial of public and pro freedoms that are the accepted norm elsewhere.
Whether the mullahs realize it or not, those brave young women are the end of Iran. They can no longer be silenced, locked up or forcibly removed from the world. They are connected. They inhabit the era of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. They know it, they celebrate it.
After years of gestation and several harrowing false beginnings, citizen politics has arrived in Iran. Set a timeline for change. And there’s no way to put that genie back in the bottle. For the ideal leader, arch-reactionary Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and for his surrogate president, Ebrahim Raisi, the message is clear: give in or “lose. “
Next week or next year, faster or later, the time when the Iranian revolution is approaching. The wheel turns again. And over time, no amount of killings, detentions, censorship and threats, no dishonor to young women, no futile effort to persist with the necessary hijab, that harsh symbol of, can prevent it.
That said, the Shiite clerical oligarchy will not willingly accept this nascent reality. He will face all the blows. Its victims, like Nasrin Sotoudeh, a heroic and much-persecuted women’s rights lawyer, know how much the regime clings to its beliefs, prejudices and power.
And yet, as Shirin Ebadi, one of Iran’s first female judges and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, pointed out, war is not opposed to Islam but to those who exploit and distort it for their own ends. theocratic dictator founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
“An interpretation of Islam that is in accord with equality and democracy is an original expression of faith,” Ebadi wrote in his 2006 book, Iran’s Awakening. “It is not faith that unites women, but the selective dictates of those who need them. “to be cloistered. “
That of Iranian women comes amid increased scrutiny of the subjugation and abuse of women in Muslim countries. The Saudi government received a well-deserved opprobrium in August after the scandalous 34-year imprisonment of University of Leeds student Salma al-Shehab for her use. of Twitter.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s misogynistic dictates, such as the last girls’ schools, dashed their hopes of acceptance. Kabul’s global nightmare of the 1990s, revealed in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, returns in full force.
However, across the emerging world, positive examples of empowered Muslim women taking charge can be discovered. I have witnessed this firsthand, at a women-owned village crab business in Bangladesh’s Bay of Bengal, at an agricultural collective in Mindanao, Philippines, and at a domestic violence organization in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
In Idlib, northwestern Syria, women have played a leading role in education, food distribution and physical care for refugees from the civil war. It’s a massive cultural shift, and it’s permanent.
Seen in this more promising context, it is clear that Iranian women are not the only ones challenging the archaic tenets of male-dominated societies. And the current upheavals are part of a continuum. Iran has replaced enormously since my first in 1977. The process of emancipation is slow and uneven, but there is no turning back.
Clearly, the Iranian regime will pass smoothly or quickly. So what will the West do? As already discussed, recent history suggests: a lot. A few harsh words here, some sanctions there, and the global caravan moves on.
This is not a surprise. And that’s a hard truth. Iran has many friends and supporters who will do what they can. But for the revolution of its time to succeed, Iranians will first have to rely on themselves.