Iranians In Zahedan Hold Anti-Regime Protests For 37th Consecutive Week

According to the popular Telegram channel of the National Student Unions Council, at about 2:30 am Thursday, Hamzeh Borzouei attacked a group of about fifty students who had begun a sit-in protest against new, stricter hijab rules and seriously injured several. 

The Telegram channel said university authorities have still not allowed the students who began their sit-in on Wednesday afternoon to leave, and campus security has prevented anyone from bringing food or water to the students. 

Students said on social media that Borzouei and other university officials made various threats against them including the threat of calling in the military to deal with them. Plainclothesmen and other security forces were already present in and outside the university in quite big numbers. 

Students also said that security claimed they blocked food delivery to prevent poisoning that they could later be blamed for if students fell ill. Students also said the besieged protesters were not allowed to use the toilettes. 

The new rules require girls to wear a pullover headscarf with stitched front (called maghna’e in Iran) which is like a nun’s coif, completely covering the head and the neck. Failing to comply, the university has announced, would result in suspension. 

In the early 1980s wearing maghna’e became compulsory in all universities, government offices and even banks but its use gradually became obsolete in some more lenient establishments including the College of Arts. 

The hijab required in the Islamic Republic consists of a long and loose tunic in muted colors worn over trousers with a similarly plain headscarf that covers all hair and shoulders. Authorities including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei say wearing a long black veil (chador in Persian) that covers from head to toe is the ‘optimal hijab’.

In the past few years, the anti-compulsory hijab movement which took root with a social media campaign organized by US women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad in 2017, called White Wednesdays, has hugely grown. The movement has gained greater momentum since the death in custody of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022 and the protests that her death sparked.

Defiance of hijab has now turned into a form of civil disobedience. Many women who have been in a tug of war with the authorities for years are now adamant to be hijab free in public. They can be seen defiantly rejecting the head scarf everywhere, from restaurants to banks and parks where previously, they could not even enter without covering their head. 

In recent months, authorities have increased pressure on students for hijab, presumably to stop the growth of the anti-compulsory hijab movement in universities across the country. 

The National Student Unions Council said in April that 435 students had been suspended or expelled in universities nationwide, where they had staged many protests and sit-ins since the beginning of the Mahsa movement last year. 

In recent months some political parties and dissidents in Iran, including the reformist Etehad-e Mellat Party and Zahra Rahnavard who has been under house arrest together with her husband Mir-Hossein Mousavi for thirteen years have demanded the abolition of the compulsory hijab laws. 

Iran's police chief, Ahmad-Reza Radan, said Thursday that President Ebrahim Raisi has approved the necessary funds to install more cameras to continue the war against hijab rebellion.

“Four special task groups have been launched to tackle the hijab norm breaking. For instance, one of them is active on virtual space to identify those who remove hijab on social media.”

Last week, Radan threatened government offices that do not deny services to unveiled women with repercussions as part of ongoing hijab enforcement.

He also vowed that police will be surveilling Caspian Sea beaches in Mazandaran and Gilan provinces with special patrols and electronic surveillance to prevent violation of hijab laws.

Threats against unveiled women have increased with the arrival of summer which has always been a season for women to ignore the strict government dress code.

In July 2022, after weeks of harsher measures on the streets, President Ebrahim Raisi ordered all government entities to strictly implement a “chastity and hijab” law.

Not long after, the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police fueled protests that spread throughout the country and have continued since September.

Since March hardliners have tried to put an end to women’s increasing defiance of the compulsory hijab and to reclaim the lost ground but to no avail.

Several regime officials have opposed Abdlohamid’s upcoming Hajj trip during the next Eid festival later this month, banning him from traveling to Mecca.

Officially known as Sheikh Abdolhamdid Esmailzehi, the Sunni cleric is widely popular because of his willingness to challenge Khamenei’s absolute authority. In addition the country's Sunni minority are heavily persecuted and the cleric has long been an advocate of minority rights, to the ire of the regime.

An audio file leaked by the hacktivist group Black Reward in December revealed that the Islamic Republic planned to tarnish Abdolhamid’s reputation to curb his influence.

In November, the outspoken Sunni Imam said women, ethnic and religious groups, and minorities have faced discrimination after the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. He also called for an internationally monitored referendum in Iran saying by killing and suppression the government cannot push back a nation.

Abdolhamid also said earlier that officials of the country should be selected from the secular population, noting that not all Iranian people are "religious" and as such do not accept religious authority.

“Don't blame me for this view. Some may not accept religion, but the right policy is that if they have merit and conscience, they should be employed," he said.

Businesses shut down in protest at the damage to the grave in Aichi cemetery which they have now hidden from view, Amini having become a symbol of the months of uprising since the 22-year-old Kurd was murdered in morality police custody in September.

Amini has become the face of the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement and the damage at the grave site sparked fury, with regime agents now totally concealing it from view for fear it had become a shrine to the movement’s martyr.

The cemetery has become a common scene of demonstrations against the state-sanctioned murder of protesters since September, many laid to rest alongside Amini.

Last Friday, dozens of victims’ families held pictures of their loved ones in peaceful protest while in a heavy handed response, regime agents arrested and transferred about 40 of them to an unknown location, including six mothers of young victims.

In recent months, the agents of the Islamic Republic have destroyed the graves of those killed in the nationwide protests in different cities of Iran.

The regime has a history of destroying the Khavaran cemetery in the past, and the families of those executed in the 80s have repeatedly protested this.

The cemetery is in southeast Tehran and an unmarked mass graveyard where at least dozens of executed prisoners are buried. Families of victims visit the cemetery regularly and lay flowers, although no one is certain about the exact identity of those buried in Khavaran.

The boy, Kian Pirfalak died when security forces fired at his family car for no apparent reason. Almost overnight, the child became a symbol of regime brutality on social media and during street protests. 

Sunday was his 10th birthday and the people of his town Izeh, in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, tried to gather at the cemetery to commemorate him but faced both regular police and forces sent by the Revolutionary Guard which had deployed in the town to prevent possible protests.

Pouya Molaei-Rad, an 18-year-old student and cousin of Kian’s mother was shot and killed by security agents near the cemetery in unclear circumstances. Eyewitnesses say that there was a confrontation with the police. A video showed the multiple gunshot wounds on the chest.

The government immediately alleged that the young man was driving toward the cemetery when he hit three security personnel and was shot multiple times, dying in hospital later. But the wounds on the victim's chest seem like straight shots, which many people see as evidence that he was not shot inside the car.

The circumstances of the shooting are not entirely clear. Some say he was caught off-guard by the sudden appearance of security forces on the road as he was driving, while the government says he intentionally ran over security agents.

Nevertheless, the incident has turned into a rallying cry for all regime opponents in Iran and abroad.

The child victim and his 18-year-old relative come from the large and fiercely independent Bakhtiari tribal people, which have to a large extent become urbanized, but maintain kinship loyalties.

Their killings will for a long time antagonize ethnic Bakhtiaris toward the Islamic regime. In the tribal culture, no one can rest until revenge is exacted for the killing of a blood kin.

As Kian Perfalak was laid to rest on November 18, his mother Mahmonir (Zaynab) Molaei-Rad made a fiery speech at her son’s grave. She conveyed a strong message of protest against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who she seemed to hold directly responsible for her son’s killing.

Iranian opposition figures abroad issued messages Sunday as soon as the news of Molaei’s killing emerged.

Exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi tweeted: “The criminal regime has murdered another of our youth. The name of Pouya Molai-Rad, this young Bakhtiari patriot, has become eternal. This child-killing regime, however, is not eternal.”

He added that the “evil” regime “will be removed and the perpetrators of the murder of Iranian children and youth will face trial. This is a national and unbreakable promise.”

Alireza Akhondi, an Iranian-born member of Sweden’s parliament and an active opposition figure said in a Persian tweet that the day when the “criminal regime will be toppled with the will of the people” is not too far away and vowed that the perpetrators of regime crimes will be held responsible.

US-based opposition figure Masih Alinejad tweeted that even family members of Moalei-Rad and Pirfalak have been arrested after Sunday’s incident.

“The Islamic Republic has become one of the world’s top executioners of its own citizens. The only way the clerical regime has engaged with an educated youthful society is through the muzzle of a gun,” Alinejad said.

Hossein Ronaghi, an opposition activist in Iran and a former political prisoner praised Mahmonir Molaei-Rad, saying that Kian’s mother “is the darling of hearts in Iran…”