100 Days of Defiance, Death and Aspiration
On Christmas, Iranians marked the 100th day of the revolution. Demonstrations in the cities of Mashhad, Sanandaj, Karaj, Isfahan and four neighbourhoods in the capital Tehran took place amid heavy crackdowns. Street arts and memorials were set up at various locations including at Tehran University. Students chanted revolutionary songs on the campus and resistance fighters continued setting Basij bases and religious institutions on fire.
This week the 40th-day memorial service was staged for several martyrs, including the 8 year old Kian Pirfalak, Dr Aylar Haghi, and Hamid Reza Rouhi. Ceremonies became a scene for public outrage although intelligence forces ravaged through the event spreading tension and terror. Aylar’s father was arrested following giving an unforgiving speech on her grave. Many were beaten by the police in cemeteries where memorials were held for Atefeh Naami, Arman Emadi, and Ali Abbasi.
Kian Pirfalak is one of the 60 children killed so far. This week two more children were murdered. Mehrdad Malek, 17, was shot by a police patrol in the city of Qazvin while driving back from his family farm. Soha Etebari, 12, was shot and killed inside her family car while driving a road from Bandar Abbas.
To mark the 100th day of the revolution residents of Zahedan took to the streets after Friday mass prayers chanting anti-regime slogans to commemorate “Bloody Friday” .“Bloody Friday” refers to a deadly crackdown that occurred on September 30th, during which security forces killed and wounded several dozen protesters using lethal weapons at the Sunni-majority city of Zahedan. Since then, residents have marked the event with more weekly protests.
Momentum was built further as employees at “Document Registration Offices” went on a one-day strike on the 100th day of the revolution and workers at Abadan Petrochemical Company launched a 3-day strike, despite maximum suppression and numerous arrests.
Besides strikes, gas shortages have also become a contributing factor to the closure of some industrial establishments. This week the gas deficit crisis cut off more than 800 public and governmental organizations and institutions. More than 50 cement plants have lost gas supply, while the electricity of the production units has been limited. Ironically, the gas of Yazd Gas Company was also cut off, due to “excessive consumption”.
The students of Sharif University’s Computer Faculty staged a sit-in in protest against the summoning of professor Ali Sharifi Zarchi who was supporting protesting students, to the Ministry of intelligence. Reza Omidi, another professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Tehran, was expelled due to the pressure of the intelligence services.
More than 650 students have been arrested in the last 100 days. Only at the prestigious Sharif university 300 students were suspended and banned from entering classes.
The sports arena also became a stage for giving leverage to the revolution. In the World Chess Championship, which has been going on since the 5th of January in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Sara Khadim al-Sharia, the grandmaster of Iranian chess, entered the stage of the competition without the obligatory hijab. This is the second case of disobedience by Iranian female athletes on an international set.
Two months ago Iranian rock climber, Elnaz Rekabi, challenged the regime by showing disregard for the regime’s rule of compulsory hijab while at World Championships. She earned a bronze medal but has been put under house arrest since then and her family villa was demolished by the regime forces.
While every facet of society is immersed in the chaos caused by struggles between people and the regime, the economy is in shambles and a total economic collapse is expected soon. this week Iran’s Battered Currency Dropped To A New Historic Low with an almost 50 per cent decline in 15 months. The power of the war-torn Syrian country’s currency is 8 times the currency of Iran.
Islamic regime seems to be losing the confidence of its allies on an international level as well.
Germany, Iran’s largest trading partner in the European Union has suspended the issuance of bank guarantees and China continues blocking $3.0 billion in Iranian money in their banks.
Although numbers implicate that our lives are in absolute ruin, we are taking account of the dead and detained. Free men and women of Iran are getting murdered every day. Some get executed, some get shot on the streets, and some die in prisons or hospitals as a result of torture. People from all walks of life are among them; from celebrities to teachers, athletes, artists, and students.
Many don’t even get their names out as their families are menaced by threats of having other family members killed or kidnapped by regime forces should they speak out. My Instagram feed is muddled with pictures of men, women, and children listed as dead, detained or missing.
Our detainees are treated like spoils of war by the Iranian regime’s mercenaries. Many women and children are kidnapped on the streets and taken to police stations or unregistered safe-houses of regime agents. A young women named Parmida Mehdipour, was kidnapped by the deputy prosecutor of Khouzestan Province 2 months ago at a mobile shop and survived to speak out about the horrors of being savagely raped at a police station. last week NYTimes published an investigative piece about various cases of rape and sexual assault and documented the case of Armita Abbasi a 20-year-old woman who was arrested for supposedly leading protests. She was brought by the police to a hospital in Karaj, her rectum haemorrhaging, her vagina torn, and her bladder displaced. A 14-year-old girl from a poor neighbourhood in Tehran who protested by taking off her head scarf at school was identified by school cameras and detained; soon afterwards, she was taken to the hospital to be treated for severe vaginal tears. The girl died and her mother, after initially saying she wanted to go public, has disappeared.
It is the vice of the human psyche to normalize even the most horrendous situations to guarantee survival and sanity. Whatever becomes normal becomes invisible.
Three months into the revolution and our deaths like tragedies we live in have become invisible. We fight with our lives on the line, but sacrificing blood doesn’t seem to be the currency for obtaining freedom. Hence, some feel they need to make our deaths into a performance for the world to notice us. We need to make citizens of the world assist us to elevate and liberate.
This week a 38 years old Iranian student residing in Lyon, France drowned himself in the Rhone River to draw the world’s attention to the traumatic situation in Iran. He said on social media he was going to kill himself to draw attention to the protest crackdown in Iran.
(Watch the full video below)
Zahra Jam his wife while in intensive care at a hospital said in an interview: “I want his friends to continue his path. we want a free and just country”.
Suicide as a political act is not a novel act of dissent. It has been committed throughout history by agonized souls. For instance, almost 50 years ago, a Czech Student, Jan Palach, burned himself to death in Prague in protest against the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops. The 20-year-old university student succeeded in his hope of inspiring Czechoslovaks to not give up hope. In Poland, in the midst of the 1943 Holocaust, Schmuel Ziegelboim killed himself to draw the world’s attention to the situation of Polish Jews under Nazi Germany.
Committing suicide for a cause in times of great despair is probably one of the most compelling political statements one can make. It is not just giving up one’s body in an act of sacrifice, that is what protesters do. Political suicide is a form of defiance; desperation transformed into political activism. One that hopefully will make others reflect and evaluate their role in the greater scheme of things.
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