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WOMEN’S protests continued to sweep Iran today over the death in custody last Friday of Mahsa Amini, arrested for breaching sexist dress laws.
In Sari, north of Tehran, large crowds cheered as women set their hijabs alight in defiant acts of protest. Street protests took place in Tehran itself and other cities, student protests have been staged at universities and bazaars across Iranian Kurdistan have been shut in protest.
Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights (Codir) assistant general secretary Jamshid Ahmadi told the Morning Star that “the murder of Mahsa Amini is the trigger that has set off an unprecedented massive nationwide protest across Iran.
“The scale of this protest mobilisation is similar to that which shook Iran in November 2019 amid protests against the sudden tripling in the price of petrol.
“Protesters are now calling openly for transition from theocratic dictatorship to a national democratic republic guaranteeing human and democratic rights, as well as social justice,” he added.
Codir said the way protesters were resisting and confronting security forces showed that “the relationship between the people and the ruling theocratic regime has entered a new stage.
“Given the highly unjust economic system and the reactionary enforcement of Islamic laws, the ruling dictatorship lost most of its social base long ago.
“It is finding it increasingly harder to control the situation without resorting to brute force and mass oppression, thus entering dangerous territory.
“The continuing popular and widescale revulsion at the death of Mahsa Amini shows the sheer depth in unpopularity of the theocratic dictatorship and its crisis at home.
“A wide spectrum of opposition forces is now using these protests to force the ruling regime into retreat with the demand to abolish the reactionary and hated ‘morality police’ [in whose hands Ms Amini died] as a first non-negotiable demand.”
Codir called for international solidarity with the Iranian protests — which was forthcoming in Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s first address to the UN general assembly on Tuesday night.
Mr Boric talked of the urgency of “putting an end to the abuses of the powerful anywhere in the world, and to mobilise our efforts to stop violence against women — whether it be in Iran, in memory of Mahsa Amini who died at the hands of police, or anywhere.”