Good Times, Bad Times, Hopeful Future
The protests in Iran are ongoing, Exactly when I start feeling like the protest are dying out, partially because I have very limited access to the Internet these days, and hence can’t get any info on what’s going on, I hear news more infuriating, more indicating of the regimes last resorts.
I wrote the above paragraph about 20 days ago and left the rest as a draft, I planned on reporting(!) on stuff that has happened in Iran since my last update, but so much is happening so fast, I couldn’t report on all of it here. I was also busy with university, new friends and my own experiences regarding civil disobedience.
Many people have died, including children with 12 years of age, killed by bullets fired by protest police mind you, not because he got some sickness or was hit by a random drunk driver. Too many teenagers and young adults lost their life in recent protests over their most simple rights, Too many to count, and quite honestly it makes my blood boil.
Connection Failed!
Internet Curbs are at their worst, It’s not completely shut off, but it might as well be, I couldn’t even reach any Arch Linux mirrors to update my system. Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, Whatsapp, not accessible with regular Internet, they CAN be opened if you use VPNs but almost no VPN works and we have to switch between them all the time. DuckDuckGo is not accessible and Google has safe search on by default and you can’t turn it off :/, I use Searx(or brave search sometimes) so I don’t care but, just for it to be recorded it here I want to talk about it. Firefox extensions are blocked, VSCode extensions are also not accessible, Google play store, App store, Jetbrain’s Website, Google Maps! And even games like call of duty and any other absurd thing you can imagine to censor when a revolution is going on.
The most innocent of the people that have been killed and brutally dealt with, are people from Zahedan, having 90 people die in one day, even though they were just exiting a mosque on a Friday noon after typical Friday prayers. Allegedly, Colonel Kouchakzai in Chabahar raped a 15 year old girl from Sistan & Baluchestan. The colonel told the girl he had to inspect her body and then raped and molested her, people having found this out were in shock and anger and came to the streets which resulted in Islamic Republic Attacking them using military grade weaponry causing at least 96 people to die.
People Marching Towards Mahsa Amini’s Grave
About two days ago, mysteriously enough, “A terrorist attack masterminded by ISIS” took place, apparently it’s super easy to take an AK-47 and pass security in Shah-Cheragh(hint: It isn’t), Now, I’m no conspiracy theorist, but ISIS has denied the fact that they orchestrated the attack and the regime has given us just enough evidence to put 2 and 2 together and deduce that the entire terrorist attack was a ploy by the Islamic Republic to take everyone’s mind off of the protests, which failed miserably, considering the fact that in the very same day, thousands of people marched towards the cemetery where Mahsa Amini is buried to mourn her death on the 40th day of her murder.
The Streets are hers(left), The new Governor of Mahabad(right)
Meanwhile the streets are occupied by the people everyday the protests are decentralized and locally organized meaning
no central leader can be pointed to/arrested to weaken the movement, as a matter of fact the people are collectively
leading the battle in the streets and it it perhaps one of the most beautiful natural patterns I’ve ever seen.
As it happens, with every new person the regime kills or puts into prison, more people join the movement,
it really does seem like the regime is out of moves and it’s only choice is to keep killing and arresting people
they don’t know what to do if that fails. Speaking of failures, people in the city of Mahabad came to the streets after
the regime’s dogs killed a man for innocently protesting, the number of people who took to the streets was so much that
they actually managed to take over the governorate and other important government buildings in Mahabad.
A tale in 3 images: Basijis blocking the doors to the main dining hall(1), Students eating their food outside, men and women together(2), the same basijis
Universities resemble the heart of the civil disobedience going on in Iran right now, the generation attending university is and has always been the face of defiance, activism and demanding rights. Needless to say university students in Iran are doing what any university student in the world would do in this scenario, Chanting against the dictatorship, Disobeying the laws that are put in place to segregate them and demanding the rights they have as humans and as Iranians. For example, the main dining halls in Iranian universities are gendered(!) meaning men and women can’t sit next to each other when dining, apparently that’s not OK. So what do you think we did? Exactly, we sat together in the main dining hall, not just in our university but in every university in Iran, and showed them that they cannot segregate us based on such stupid Ideas. I can’t help but remember when Rosa parks sat in the non-black section of the bus, I’m not saying the situation is as bad here, but opposing a gender apartheid is as great of a move as opposing a race apartheid(IMO). Many university students have been suspended, many of them have been arrested and now they’ve started raiding dormitories and dragging students out and to the detention centers where they brutally interrogate them and confiscate all of their electronics to inspect.
University students of Noshirvani Babol University holding hands in solidarity(left), Savage of a basiji shooting at students in Tehran North Azad University(right)
Jadi has been in detention for over 27 days (by now : 31 Oct) without doing anything illegal
Nothing like this movement has ever been seen here in the Middle East, Let alone Iran, I feel like I was born in the Correct timeline and somehow it’s hard for me to believe the fact that this is happening, I hope all of this leads to a revolution and that I can live to be free in Iran, having the same concerns as everyone living in a free country, no longer thinking about the ways I can game foreign websites into letting me create an account sounds nice.(And so does not being in fear of my life lol) Why do I write these blog posts you might ask? Well, It’s not like I’m a journalist or that I deliver particularly new information it’s just that I feel like It helps me cope with everything happening around me and also I can look back to these blog posts years from now and tell myself (and everyone else) how I was feeling when these incidents were taking Place. Having said all of that I left a lot of unsaid things, I didn’t write about JADI or every other person the regime has locked up wrongfully but I suppose I was able to convey my overall feeling. Living through what seems to be a revolution is sure weird specially the part where you can’t actually believe it’s happening.
-- P.S + Glossary --
P.S: I included "good times" in the title because despite every bad thing that is happening I find it to be good that the people of Iran are taking their destiny into their own hands.
Basiji : A paramilitary volunteer militia established in Iran in 1979 by order of Ayatollah Khomeini, Today, the force consists of young Iranians who volunteer, often in exchange for official benefits. Basij serve as an auxiliary force engaged in activities such as internal security, enforcing state control over society.
Governorate: Arguably The most important government building of an Iranian city