‘May I ask you a few questions?’, I ask the young woman. Immediately I see the doubt in her big brown eyes. She wears a white medical mouth mask, not a headscarf, and stands at the edge of the cheering mob.
We have both just reached the end point of the protest march. Police have blocked the road here and are ready to intervene should the protest degenerate.
‘I would like to write a piece about this demonstration, with some photos included,’ I explain to her. ‘Rather not,’ the woman says, a little embarrassed. ‘I would still like to go back to Iran,’ she explains.
Religious stipulations
Iran is the country where she grew up and many of her friends and family members are still living there.
It is no surprise that she fears consequences. People have been arrested in Iran during the recent protests. Killed even.
Yet, sisters and brothers are still taking to the streets in large numbers in Iran. And so in the rest of the world, like here in Brussels.
The trigger for these protests is the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian woman, who was arrested by morality police in Tehran on Sept. 13, 2022, for not wearing her headscarf in full accordance with religious stipulations.
CCTV footage shows her collapsing at the police station. According to eyewitnesses, she collapsed due to the police brutality she had to endure during her arrest.
Mahsa Amini was in a coma for three days in a Tehran hospital. On Sept. 16, 2022, she died in intensive care.
Ava
‘I love children, but I will never have any. Not here, not in this country. That’s what my friends in Iran tell me, when I call them,’ says Ava Basiri, co-organiser and spokeswoman of the protest march in Brussels.
Ava Basiri is the daughter of Iranian immigrants who came to Belgium, 37 years ago.
‘The family on my father’s side is Baha’i (Iran’s largest religious minority, ed.), the family on my mother’s side is atheist. Many Baha’is were hanged during the Islamic Revolution, including people from my family. My parents sensed that it could end badly for them too, and left Iran,’ Ava tells.
‘I’ve always felt how my parents miss the country; I grew up with that. Later I also heard friends talking about Iran, and became very interested in it myself,’ she explains.
‘We are the closest ever to a revolution, if it doesn’t happen now, it never will. Freedom or death, that’s what the youth is thinking today. But support is needed from outside, through diplomatic channels,’ Ava argues.
Less warm
‘I am tremendously affected by the violence on children in Iran! I’m against the regime anyway, but on top of that the violence towards children infuriates me,’ says a woman walking by with her stroller. Her name is Baharak.
‘Until I was 13, I lived in Tehran with my mother, a woman activist, leftist and separated from my father. She feared for her life, fled the Iranian regime in 1989 and took me with her. We first stayed in Turkey for a few months before coming to Belgium,’ she explains.
‘After all these years, I still don’t feel completely at home in Belgium. People here are less warm than in Iran, and I cherish wonderful memories of my childhood. Memories of my grandparents and friends from school. Families there are totally torn apart.’
A silence falls, Baharak gets tears in her eyes. ‘Preferably I would return,’ she then says.
‘But it’s too dangerous there now,’ she continues. ‘I am someone who would take to the streets, against the Islamic regime, for women’s rights. My children, two boys aged 1 and 4, are far too young to be orphaned.’
‘This great togetherness among Iranians I have never seen before, not in Belgium and not in Iran,’ Baharak testifies. ‘Hopefully it will lead to change, and I will still be able to return to the country where I spent my childhood.’
Children
Several children were killed during the protests in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini. At least 23 between September 20 and 30 alone, Amnesty International counted. Violence has continued after that. Amnesty believes the real number of children killed is much higher.
Kids were shot in the head by Iranian security forces, evidence of Amnesty shows, for example Javad Pousheh, an 11-year-old boy.
Other children were killed as a result of fatal beatings by Iranian security forces during the protests. The girls Sarina Esmailzadeh and Nika Shakarami (both 16), for instance.
Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) counted 32 children killed between Sept. 17 and Oct. 22 during the protests in Iran, and likewise estimates that the real number is much higher.
Not afraid
What does it do to you to see images of those executions, I ask a young man in the crowd holding a protest sign in the air. ‘It’s extremely painful to see, but the regime has been killing people all along,’ he replies.
‘This may have been the first official execution, but all those other executions, in the streets or in cells, are just as bad. Those people were also coldly murdered,’ he continued.
Is the regime doing this to scare the youth? ‘Yes, totally.’ And do you think that will work? ‘No, the youth in Iran have nothing to lose. And they already saw people being murdered in the streets. So those who are going to demonstrate are not afraid. This protest is different, things can really change, the resistance persist,’ concludes the man determinedly.
Connected
‘For many years, religion created the framework and perspective. You couldn’t question these,’ says Afshin who comes from the same region as Mahsa Amini but has been living in Brussels for several years now.
‘Today, young people are connected. They are connected to the world and discover different perspectives. They see what it is like elsewhere and demand freedom’, he further explains.
Whose names are those, on your placard, I ask Ali, who lives in the Netherlands but came to Brussels for this demonstration.
‘These are the names of the people who are currently in danger, detained in Iran and at risk of being executed. The first on the list has already been hanged. It’s so fucked up and traumatising. Such executions are sometimes carried out in public in Iran, with a big crane, so that lots of people see it and get scared,’ Ali says indignantly.
Would that strategy work today, I ask him ‘No, it makes people even angrier.’
Maryam
‘Until 3 years ago, I lived in Tehran. Once I got stopped by the morality police, when I was driving my car. That was 12 years ago, the morality police had just started working during that period, so I didn’t know them,’ Maryam testifies.
‘According to them I wasn’t wearing my hijab properly and they made me stop,’ she explains. ‘They took away my driver’s licence and insurance. They also explained to me where I could pick up my papers again. For a long time, I didn’t dare to go to that address, since I didn’t know what to expect.’
‘After a few months I did go. The morality police made me sign a document there, to make me confirm I was ready to wear the hijab properly, and that I would never make such a mistake again.’
‘I didn’t grow up in an activist environment, yet I couldn’t help but protest. I explained to my family that I could barely breathe and that I felt so unfree,’ Maryam continues.
Sister
‘I have three sisters and one of them was hit by paintball bullets during the protests in Iran. Another time she came back from work, not wearing her hijab. Security guards in the metro started arguing with her’, says Maryam.
‘They took my sister to the police station, where they took away her mobile phone. Police scrolled through her social media and identified me as one of her followers. They kept my sister there for a few days and interrogated her.’
‘Fortunately, she had deleted the photos related to the demonstrations. They released her on bail, but I cut off the contact with my family to keep them safe.’
‘We, here, are the voice of the people in Iran. We motivate them from here. We’re not giving up, we’re fighting. I see that people have no fear,’ Maryam concludes combatively.
Background
On Sept. 13, 2022, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was detained by the morality police in Tehran. The young Iranian woman, born into a Kurdish family, was detained because she was wearing her hijab too loose and some hair was showing.
Her 17-year-old brother Kiarash, who was standing by, was told by the police that Mahsa would be taken to a detention center, where she had to take a course on the hijab rules and that she would be released again later that day.
Kiarash waited for his sister, but Mahsa didn’t come out of the detention center anymore. Or she did, to be taken to the hospital emergency room.
Explanation of the police? Mahsa Amini suddenly collapsed at the detention center, after suffering a heart attack. But no violence had been used against her. She must have been ill or had a condition, police stated.
Other girls who were detained along with Mahsa, are saying something completely different: that Mahsa was severely beaten in the police vehicle on the way to the detention center, with the baton on the head.
Mahsa Amini remained in a coma for three days and died at the hospital on Sept. 16. Her death led to mass protests in Iran and around the world.
Brussels, October – December 2022
