Editorials

The Irish Times view on protests in Iran

The ruthless response of the authorities suggests that despite the scale of the protests, change will be slow to arrive

The death of Mahsa Amini has sparked widespread protests in Iran and across the world (Photo: AP)
The death of Mahsa Amini has sparked widespread protests in Iran and across the world (Photo: AP)
Wed Jan 11 2023 - 20:45

The protests sparked by the death in custody last September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, arrested by Iran’s morality police for wearing her headscarf “improperly”, have by now led to the violent deaths of more than 500 protesters, up to 20,000 arrests, at least fourteen capital sentences following cursory trials and at least four executions, including those, last Saturday, of two men accused of killing a member of the Islamic militia. Reports say more executions have been ordered in recent days.

The authorities claimed Amini died as a result of a previously existing brain condition, but it is likely that she was beaten after her arrest. In the continuing unrest there have also been reports of sexual violence being used against women detainees and of confessions extracted by torture. Many of those shot dead have been children.

The current strife follows widespread disorder in 2019 and 2020, when initially peaceful protests against runaway inflation degenerated into rioting. This led to up to 1,500 deaths as the authorities fired into crowds of demonstrators.

Human rights abuses were common in Iran during the Western-backed rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with hundreds of political executions. But after the 1979 Islamic Revolution these came to be reckoned in the thousands. Removal of repressive legislation affecting women is a key demand of the current wave of protests, but the movement’s slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom”, suggests a wider agenda, including the breaking of the stranglehold which Islamic clergy and jurists have on the country’s electoral system and the removal of the huge economic privileges enjoyed by elite religious-political bodies.

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Unfortunately, the massive resources the regime is prepared to allocate to stamping out dissent and its lack of scruples about the wholesale slaughter of its opponents make the chances of achieving change from below look remote. Political progress in Iran may have to wait until a significant segment of the current establishment decides that its present strategy of unlimited repression has outlived its usefulness.