California spends billions rebuilding burned towns. The case for calling it quits

Erika D. Smith, Anita Chabria
Tue, September 27, 2022 at 6:00 AM·15 min read

Cathy Buchanan holds a handmade cardboard "Greenville Lives" sign at the start of the traditional Gold Diggers Day parade in Greenville, Calif. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Most days, Ken Donnell steals a moment to gaze at the forested valley that surrounds this remote grid of streets in the mountains.

Before the Dixie fire came barreling through the Sierra Nevada last year, leveling everything here but a few houses, businesses and a school, this was a charming — if dying — Gold Rush-era town that about 800 people called home. Now, much of the charm is gone along with most of the residents, replaced by the skeletal remains of conifer trees and the deathly silence of block after empty block.

But even as Donnell has mourned, his mop of gray hair a fixture at community meetings on how to bring the town and the surrounding Plumas County valley back to life, he has become grateful.

Residents attend a town hall meeting at the high school in Greenville. Before the Dixie fire came barreling through here last year, this was a charming — if dying — Gold Rush-era town. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

It’s good that Greenville burned down when it did, he believes. Sooner rather than later. Because one day, in a not-so-distant future ravaged by climate change, many of Northern California's far-flung rural towns — founded in another time and for another economy — might not get rebuilt at all.


Gone could be the political and public will to spend hundreds of millions of dollars — with Southern California taxpayers footing a big chunk of the bill — to replace homes and businesses for a small number of people, knowing that it's all likely to burn down again as extreme heat and drought keep decimating unmanaged forests.

“Resources are going to be drained," Donnell predicted. "It's just the reality."

By our back-of-the-napkin math — which we calculated because no one in Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration could provide an official tally — it will take about $1 billion just to rebuild Greenville. Only about 300 people plan to return, and climate scientists say the town could catch fire again in as little as 10 years.

"These disasters are going to occur more and more frequently," Donnell acknowledged, "and in more and more places.”

The Sierra Nevada town of Greenville, where only a few buildings survived the 2021 Dixie fire. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

We know it might sound far-fetched that a changing climate could one day force California to abandon entire towns in high-risk fire zones in the mountains, the way a handful of coastal communities have reluctantly embraced a "managed retreat" from rising sea levels.

But it's really not. Not when most of both rural Lake and Butte counties have gone up in flames multiple times in the last few years, often displacing and sometimes killing residents. Not when eight of the 10 largest wildfires in the state's history have occurred in the last five years, with the top three in Northern California.

"Whatever risk tolerances that we collectively decided were acceptable, for whatever reason, in whatever context, are no longer valid," said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. That's because Californians built communities and infrastructure "in a particular historical context that no longer exists."

As journalists, we've covered many of the wildfires that have laid waste to Northern California. The two of us have seen the flames up close and spoken to people as they've returned to their homes and ranches to find little more than rubble. Or, even worse, the remains of a loved one.

We've seen the hope in people's eyes when they talk about rebuilding, and seen the disappointment on their faces when nothing has changed years later. We've also heard the panic in their voices when smoke from a wildfire rolls toward a neighborhood recently rebuilt from the ashes of a previous fire.

We're not climate scientists, disaster relief workers, bureaucrats or firefighters. But we've interviewed them all, and we're merely saying out loud what many say quietly: Something must change.

What California is doing is dangerous and unsustainable, yet it continues down a well-trodden path, never hesitating to rally around people who have lost their livelihoods to a disaster, whether it be a mudslide or an earthquake — but especially a wildfire.

A car heads up the "Crescent Grade" north of the Sierra Nevada town of Greenville. The Highway 89 route was green with pines, firs and cedars before the Dixie fire charred the area, prompting some residents to avoid it because it brings back painful memories. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

We are #ParadiseStrong, #SantaRosaStrong, #GrizzlyFlatsStrong and now #GreenvilleStrong. And we've spent billions in taxpayer dollars to prove it, along with ensuring that Pacific Gas & Electric, responsible for sparking far too many of these destructive conflagrations, is on the hook to pay billions more and to help rebuild.

We do this because it's the morally right thing to do for our fellow Californians, many of whom are elderly and poor and don't deserve the misery and uncertainty of losing everything but the clothes on their backs.

People like Donnell, whose home and business were wiped out by the Dixie fire — to date, the second-largest in California's history.

But the cold, hard logic of science has a way of poking holes in emotionally driven policies and moral certainties. This is especially true when it comes to the profound environmental changes under way because of human-exacerbated aridification.

Fish carcasses lay sprawled on the distinct dried mud flats at one of the closed marinas at depleted Lake Mead. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The same unprecedented drying of California's climate that has pushed the Colorado River and Lake Mead to the brink of depletion, forcing Angelenos to conserve water in a bid to stave off further disaster, has helped create the perfect conditions for massive wildfires in our forests.

“The problem is, these are places that were already high-risk, but the risks have dramatically escalated from high to extreme," UCLA's Swain said. "It's getting increasingly likely that we see these small towns in high-risk zones wiped off the map every passing year."

It's a pattern that raises uncomfortable questions about how Californians must adapt to live more sustainably in the future. Questions that many in government would probably prefer not to answer.

For instance, should we really be rebuilding every single town that is scorched by a wildfire, particularly if it means we'll be putting people in mortal danger again?

Or would that money be better spent fortifying a larger, more urban community outside of a high-risk fire zone or restoring forests and watersheds damaged by wildfire, rather than, say, paying for new underground power lines and broadband internet service in the mountains of Greenville?

And if we don't rebuild every town, which ones should make the cut? And why?

Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) speaks at a town hall meeting in Greenville. "Honestly, how many billions can I keep going back to D.C. — to the well — asking for Paradise, Magalia and Greenville, and maybe a little bit for Doyle or whatever the next town is going to be?" (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Even longtime Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale), whose district includes parts of Plumas and Butte counties, has questions.

"Honestly, how many billions can I keep going back to D.C. — to the well — asking for Paradise, Magalia and Greenville, and maybe a little bit for Doyle or whatever the next town is going to be?" he mused one morning in July. "I mean, that's my job to keep asking. But it's, you know, 'Oh, you again? Another fire?' I'll ask every time, but how long will they keep listening?"

Like many people with ties to rural Northern California, Sue Weber scoffs at the suggestion that towns that burn down shouldn't be rebuilt simply because of the ever-growing risk of catastrophic wildfire.

Weber is co-chair of the Dixie Fire Collaborative, the nonprofit coordinating the recovery of Greenville and neighboring Indian Falls and Canyondam, and "managed retreat" isn't in her vocabulary. That would be akin to giving up on people — blasphemy for a woman who spent years as a nun, both as an assistant to Mother Teresa and leading an HIV/AIDS hospice in San Francisco.

Sue Weber, here meditating in Taylorsville, Calif., is co-chair of the Dixie Fire Collaborative, the nonprofit coordinating the recovery of Greenville and neighboring Indian Falls and Canyondam. A former nun who worked with Mother Teresa, she now lives in a remote stretch of the Sierra Nevada. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Residents of rural communities are "pissed off," Weber said with her characteristic, sometimes foul-mouthed frankness. "They feel the pain that they no longer can live the life they wanted to live."

They didn't keep up as California changed, she explained. First, as environmentalists championed a shift away from harmful but profitable mining and logging operations, and now as California moves to close prisons as Democrats wisely rethink a criminal justice system that has allowed mostly white, rural towns to treat Black and Latino prisoners as a source of revenue.

And in an era of Trumpism and political brinkmanship, the threat of climate change coupled with the lack of urgency around forest- thinning projects and prescribed burns that can greatly reduce wildfire risk has only fueled new conspiracy theories and further inflamed right-wing extremism.

"There's a lot of folks who are trying to push people out of rural areas or rural communities, and they're saying they shouldn't be there," said Jonathan Kusel, founder and executive director of the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment, repeating a popular refrain among residents of Northern California.

Most members of the Dixie Fire Collaborative choose to see wildfire as just another acceptable risk to be managed. Just like rising sea levels in San Francisco, flooding in Sacramento and drought in Los Angeles. The threat of climate change is everywhere, they point out.

Jonathan Kusel, founder and executive director of the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment, stands amid the ruins of the Sierra Lodge in Greenville. "There's a lot of folks who are trying to push people out of rural areas or rural communities, and they're saying they shouldn't be there," he says. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

"We all kind of pick our poison, don't we?" Kusel added.

The real problem, many here argue, is that Greenville isn't seen as an equal to San Francisco or Sacramento or Los Angeles. Indeed, it's a town that most Californians didn't even know existed before the Dixie fire wiped it off the map and one that most wouldn't miss if it never returned from the ashes.

"This was not a thriving community, it was a dying community," Weber said.

It's hard to justify rebuilding a town that had a shrinking population long before a wildfire evicted everyone else. So, more than anything, she has set out to create a reason for Greenville to exist.

"As hard as it is and as hard as it's going to continue to be, we have this opportunity to build it back and thrive," Weber said. "And for me, that means moving it forward into the future. We have to have a vision that's not 10 years old. We have to have a vision 50 years out, 60 years out."

That includes a partnership with the Sierra Institute to run a state-funded sawmill that will take those burned, skeletal trees that dot so much of Plumas County and churn out mass timber, a much-hyped, eco-friendly source of lumber that's usable for new wildfire-hardened housing.

Others are looking to tourism, hoping to capitalize on Greenville's proximity to the Pacific Crest Trail. Kira Wattenburg King, with help from her partner, Plumas County Supervisor Kevin Goss, is working to reopen a sprawling resort with "Dirty Dancing" vibes.

Kaley Bentz, third-generation owner of Riley's Jerky in Greenville, carries roofing tile up a ladder. Bentz is rebuilding the business, which was destroyed in Dixie fire. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Meanwhile, Kaley Bentz, the third-generation owner of Riley's Jerky, recently finished building a production facility — much bigger than the one that burned down — that will employ two dozen people.

More than anything, the people from Greenville believe they're creating a sustainable, climate-change-proof model, not just for their town, but for all of the rural West. And there's some indication that federal and state officials are paying attention to what they're doing.

"We care about the individuals and we care about economic development, and they've got to be two trains," Weber said, waving two fingers through the air. "They've got to be moving at the same time."

We harbor no illusions.

We don't expect anyone in rural Northern California to voluntarily move — assuming they can even afford to do so — simply because climate scientists warn they're at extreme risk for losing everything in a wildfire. Or because it might be more prudent to invest our finite tax dollars to prevent a disaster in a city or a suburb with more people.

History has demonstrated again and again that the needs of the many do not outweigh the wants of the few or the one. Otherwise, there wouldn't be wealthy people in Southern California trying to keep their lawns green even as Lake Mead approaches "deal pool" status.

What bothers us — and what inspired us to spend time in Greenville — is that almost no one in the Newsom administration seems to be discussing the overlapping issues of climate change, forest management and housing in a cohesive or comprehensive way.

People gather at dusk near an old-fashioned "watering hole" for a street dance on the evening of the Gold Digger Days celebration in Greenville. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Even as alarms are sounded about aridification, severe drought stretches into another year with an almost nonexistent snowpack and predictions emerge about a "megaflood" displacing up to 10 million Californians, a statewide land-use plan remains a pipe dream.

Instead of heading off a worsening if undeclared war between urban and rural communities over increasingly scarce resources, we've been left with competing public policy imperatives.

The state is spending enormous sums to rebuild mountain towns that have burned down, while also discouraging people from moving into the wildlands where most wildfires happen, while also being slow to crack down on NIMBY cities that have long failed to build enough affordable housing, while also touting its success on combating climate change, while also failing to significantly speed up forest management projects that would reduce carbon-spewing wildfires.

We worry about the consequences if California sticks with this confusing, conflicting mess of a strategy. And if Newsom, in particular, doesn't get serious about putting the state on a safer, more sustainable path for living in a time transformed by a changing environment. Championing the switch to electric vehicles is important, but so is land use.

Dozens of people have died in wildfires in recent years, with 11 of the deadliest fires occurring since 2000.

Air quality is worsening too. The more than 9,000 wildfires — most of them caused by people — that burned across the state in 2020 shot so much carbon into the atmosphere that it offset decades of gains in air quality, even as the COVID-19 pandemic took millions of vehicles off the road.

And with every wildfire that happens in the Sierra, vegetation burns, weakening slopes and sending sediment into streams and rivers and, eventually, reservoirs, affecting water quality.

Greenville, we should note, is near the top of a watershed that's used by some 25 million people, including in thirsty Southern California. Perhaps this is why Weber of the Dixie Fire Collaborative speaks about the power of her small town, where crucial questions are being answered and decisions about land use and the distribution of resources are being made.

On a Saturday in July, she looked around at the hundreds of displaced residents who had come back to Greenville to celebrate the local holiday, Gold Diggers Day.

Tiffany Lozano, right, covers her face from the smoke as her sister, Kelly Tan, photographs what is left of Hunter's Hardware store on Main Street in Greenville, destroyed in the Dixie fire. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

A year ago, smoke from the Dixie fire was creeping over the trees and inching across a meadow. Few believed then that flames would roar through the buildings. This year, there was a parade. Drinks and food were served from food trucks, rather than from the usual brick-and-mortar businesses.

"It's like crazy amazing," Weber said as she downed the last of a beer from a plastic cup. "A little weird, but amazing."

A deejay set up. A raucous, drunken dance party followed — in the middle of a burned-down block, in the shadow of skeletal trees, under a sky eerily orange from the setting sun. It amounted to an almost primal scream.

"Greenville lives! We will rebuild!"

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Russia’s invasion has been very profitable for the IMF, which is gouging Ukraine and other countries in crisis

Russia’s invasion has been very profitable for the IMF, which is gouging Ukraine and other countries in crisis© AFP via Getty Images

Yurii Romashko -

OUTSIDE THE BOX

It has now been six months since Russia, in an outrageous act of aggression, launched its brutal and unprovoked full-scale invasion of my country. In that period, while much of the world rallied to provide us with economic assistance, we have had to pay nearly $1.37 billion to the world’s crisis lender: the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Related video: OECD Sees Global Economy Jolted by War in Ukraine


Some of this payment was the normal cost of servicing loans, including new emergency loans made to ensure stability in response to the Russian invasion. But over $147 million are extra charges—the result of an onerous and opaque IMF policy that targets countries in crisis with additional fees, even when loans are paid on time.

Add to unsustainable debt burdens

The IMF imposes these “surcharges” on countries with a debt to the Fund greater than 187.5% of their assigned quota at the organization or when the loan lasts more than 36 or 51 months (depending on the type of program).

These surcharges come on top of regular interest and service fees, and are, in theory, intended to discourage overreliance on the Fund. The reality, however, is that they add to unsustainable debt burdens, siphoning valuable resources from countries facing acute challenges and hampering their ability to manage shocks and return to stable, sustainable economic conditions.

Also read: As Ukraine claws back territory, the IMF is crucial to gaining more financial support from Kyiv’s allies, says National Bank chief‘

Surcharges make poor economic sense at any time, but all the more so during a moment like the present, when the emergency conditions facing many countries—COVID-19, rising food and fuel prices and, in the case of Ukraine, even all-out war—are exogenous to domestic-policy decisions.

Big money maker

Why would the IMF maintain such a blatantly counterproductive policy? Perhaps because it’s become a big money maker for the Fund. From 2018 to 2029, the IMF will have drawn in more than $7 billion in income from surcharges.

In a perfect reversal of the Fund’s raison d’être, surcharges draw resources from countries experiencing economic instability in order to supplement the IMF’s profits. In theory these profits are needed in order to finance the organization’s precautionary balances, designed to protect the Fund against potential future losses. Precautionary balances is a term the IMF uses to name their accumulated profits.

In actual fact, the IMF’s own projections indicate that, in the coming years, surcharges are not necessary for maintaining the Fund’s precautionary balances well above the established floor. Almost paradoxically, the consequences of the war will mean more countries in crisis will resort to the IMF and generate regular interest income for its finances, decreasing even further the need for surcharges.

The absurdity of the Fund’s policy of imposing these extra fees on countries in crisis is particularly blatant when it comes to Ukraine. In April, the World Bank predicted that the war would shrink Ukraine’s economy by 45%. Since the start of the year, the hryvnia has dropped 7.4% against the dollar, and last month the central bank drastically raised its key interest rate from 10% to 25% in an attempt to prevent it from depreciating further.

Estimates made last fall suggest that, between 2021 and 2023, amid this double tragedy of full-scale war and its economic fallout, Ukraine will have to pay the IMF $483 million in surcharges. As a result of the new financial burdens brought on by the war, that’s an underestimate.

Egypt paying $1. 2 billion

Ukraine is not the only country being made to pay surcharges despite—or because of—its crisis conditions. Egypt, the second most heavily surcharged country in the world, was among the top 10 importers of wheat from Ukraine and Russia prior to the war, dependent on these countries for 85% of its wheat and 73% of its sunflower oil. As rising food prices contribute to a “perfect storm” of hunger, Egypt will be expected to pay the IMF $1.2 billion in surcharges between 2022 and 2025.

Currently, 16 countries are paying surcharges to the IMF. By the IMF’s own estimates, that number will likely reach 38 by 2025—and that prediction was made even before the war threw the global economy deeper into turmoil.

The U.N. Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy, and Finance recently recommended that “given the global nature of the present crisis, IMF interest rate surcharges should be suspended for at least two years.” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres similarly called for the suspension of surcharge payments for a period of two to five years. Leading economists and Ukrainian civil society organizations are among those who have demanded their elimination entirely.

Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act led by Reps. Jesús García and Jim Himes that would direct the Treasury Department to support a comprehensive review of the IMF’s surcharge policy, and the suspension of all surcharge payments until the review is completed.

Such a measure should be neither controversial nor partisan. The IMF should not be generating its profits from countries already in severe economic distress, particularly during an unprecedented confluence of global crises. At the very least, such a policy should be subjected to intense scrutiny.

We are under no illusions that eliminating surcharges will solve our country’s considerable economic woes. But as the old refrain goes—one that has taken on new and profound urgency as our country struggles to repel the Russian invasion and eventually rebuild—every dollar counts.

For the sake of Ukraine, and every country enduring the global economic and hunger crises, it is time to end the IMF’s surcharges.

Yurii Romashko is co-founder and executive director of Ukraine’s Institute for Analysis and Advocacy.

UPDATED

Iran’s morality police disappear from streets after dozens killed in protests
After woman’s death in custody, Tehran weighs less heavy-handed tactics for monitoring Islamic dress code

Iranian women shop at the Grand Bazaar in Iran's capital, Tehran on Wednesday. Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images

Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran
Wed Sep 28 2022 - 

The white-and-green Guidance Patrol vans, used by Iran’s morality police to monitor and arrest women who defy the Islamic dress code, have in recent days disappeared from the streets of Tehran.

For the past decade a symbol of the Islamic republic’s crackdown on women, the vans are not even visible outside the morality police centre in central Tehran.

Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman of Kurdish ethnicity, was this month bundled into one of these vehicles. She later died in custody, triggering the biggest street protests across the country since the 2019 unrest over fuel prices. At least 41 protesters have died, according to state television. Hundreds of people have been arrested, local agencies report, including political activists and journalists.

Such is the outrage over her death that people from across the Iranian political spectrum have called for an end to the official policing of women’s clothing. “Guidance Patrol will most probably be withdrawn from the streets,” said Saeed Laylaz, a reformist analyst. “The Islamic republic will have a major setback over the hijab in practice and will have no other choice but to give more social freedom to the urban middle-class youth.”

For more than a week, young protesters, many the same age as Amini, have poured on to the streets in towns and cities across the country chanting anti-regime slogans such as “We don’t want the Islamic republic” and “Death to the dictator”

.

A protester holds a portrait of Mahsa Amini during a demonstration in front of the Iranian embassy in Brussels on September 23rd. Photograph: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

University students have demonstrated on campuses and female protesters have burnt their scarves. Others faced riot police without wearing their hijab, showing little fear. While the protests have now subsided, Iranians on social media still share pictures of women killed during the protests.


For young people struggling with massive economic problems such as poverty and inequality, these patrols had become a lightning conductor for their rage, Emad Afrough, a sociologist told the state news agency IRNA.

“We have launched something which has no human, moral, logical and even legal justification,” he said. “The way a [police]man throws a woman into the car is inhuman and un-Islamic.”

The wearing of the hijab is one of the defining images of the theocratic regime. In the wake of the Islamic revolution in 1979, revolutionaries forced women to wear scarves in public. In 1983, the hijab officially became obligatory for women. The violation of this rule was punishable with up to 74 lashes. Later, jail sentences and fines replaced flogging.

Hardliners under former president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad made the police responsible for “promoting social security” in 2006 when they launched the Guidance Patrol – a label later changed to Moral Security Police, though people continue to refer to them as the Guidance Patrol. Many police officers were loath to assume this responsibility because they said it was not their job to deal with women’s hair and clothes.

The enforcement of the rules on the hijab have intensified in the past year since, with the election of Ebrahim Raisi as president, hardliners took over all arms of the state. They hoped that the stronger enforcement of the rules over the hijab could slow the modernisation of Iran, an increasingly secular society.

But, noted Jalal Rashidi Kouchi, a member of parliament, “the police have been damaged because of the Guidance Patrol” with “no results but losses for the country”.

The women they arrest have to give written commitments not to violate the law again and to attend hour-long classes on morality. Car owners also receive text messages to go to the morality police centre if there are women in their cars without scarves. Their cars are then impounded for up to two months.

It is unclear how many police officers work in Guidance Patrol but their presence, in busy squares, parks and outside metro stations, makes women feel insecure. Amini was arrested in a park shortly after she got out of a nearby metro station in central Tehran. Her family allege she was beaten up in the van. The authorities deny this and say she had a pre-existing condition.

It is unclear what comes next, though the Islamic republic is not expected to revoke the law on the hijab.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not commented on the latest protests but two months ago he defended the obligation to wear the hijab. The fact that Iranian women occupy half of university seats, he said, makes clear that the Islamic hijab is not an obstacle to women’s progress.

Conservative organisations have however called for an end to the police’s role in enforcing the rules. “How can a force in charge of order and security be in charge of holding hijab classes?” asked the Headquarters to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice.

“Religious beliefs are not created by batons, arrests and Guidance Patrol. We cannot force people into paradise,” Gholamreza Nouri Ghezeljeh, a reformist member of parliament, told Shargh daily newspaper.


But he was dismissive about the introduction of fines. “As if one can decide about paradise and hell with money,” he said. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022

For Iranian protesters, a digital double-edged sword

Omid Khazani and Nabih Bulos
Wed, September 28, 2022

A police motorcycle burns in Tehran during a protest on Sept. 19, 2022, over the death of a young woman in police custody. The photo was taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran. (Associated Press)

Iran’s anti-government protests, which were sparked by the death of a young woman in police custody, have gone viral, and then some.

The internet is an essential tool for these demonstrators. For more than a week, millions have shared wrenching videos and vivid online images of confrontations between protesters and Iranian authorities.

They’ve topped news broadcasts and ricocheted across the globe.

The hard-line government in Tehran has deployed digital trackers and waged an all-out media war against protesters and their supporters — a strategy it used in 2019 to quash protests in just three days. Back then, authorities took control of the internet and unleashed a violent crackdown that resulted in thousands of arrests and as many as 1,500 deaths.

This time is different. The protests are well into their second week and show little sign of waning.

They began Sept. 16 after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who allegedly had violated the country's conservative dress code, and quickly tapped into wider discontent with government corruption and declining living standards. Officials say 41 people have been killed, including demonstrators and police, and 1,200 arrested, while rights groups claim much higher figures.

A key reason protesters have been able to keep the demonstrations going and maintain the world's attention: They were ready to do battle in cyberspace.

"In 2019, everybody was shocked authorities could impose a massive internet shutdown, but this time many predicted it would happen,” said Mahbod, a 27-year-old student at Tehran's Sharif University. Like others interviewed, he gave only his first name for fear of reprisals.

Hackers and tech experts worldwide have weighed in to help cyber-savvy activists organize, fight back and dominate in the digital domain — a key battleground that Iran’s leadership, more than ever, appears unable to control.

Hours after the protests began, internet monitor Netblocks reported a 33% loss in connectivity in Tehran, which later spread to other cities and provinces across Iran.

But activists quickly outmaneuvered the government, turning to Instagram and WhatsApp — some of the few social media sites still functioning — to call for demonstrations or set up meeting points. They started a hashtag under the Persian version of #Mahsa_Amini that was retweeted by some 30 million people despite the shutdown. It has reached more than 100 million users, making it the most retweeted hashtag in Twitter's history, Iranian opposition outlets say.

Then on Wednesday, the government restricted access to most social media, curtailing it sharply between 4 p.m. and approximately 1 a.m., when most protests take place. Apple and Google Play stores are blocked to prevent people from installing Virtual Private Network (VPN) apps they could use to circumvent surveillance.

Still, Mahbod’s more tech-inclined friends at university share information on which software and settings to use; it’s not uncommon for people to have four or five different programs to switch between depending on the day and area.

"The VPNs we use are much more complex than they were a few years ago," said Mehdi, a 39-year-old self-described computer geek from Tehran. "Cheap ones you need to switch every three or four days, but the more expensive ones with subscriptions work well."

Help has also come from outside Iran’s borders. The tech collective Anonymous has hacked government websites, including that of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. On Sunday, it doxxed members of parliament, releasing lawmakers’ phone numbers and other data.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department on Friday eased sanctions by authorizing technology companies to offer “secure, outside platforms and services” to Iranian users.

“As courageous Iranians take to the streets to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, the United States is redoubling its support for the free flow of information to the Iranian people,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said in a statement.

“With these changes, we are helping the Iranian people be better equipped to counter the government’s efforts to surveil and censor them,” the statement added.

Hours later, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk said that the Starlink satellite system, which relies on a low-Earth-orbit satellite network to offer broadband internet, was now activated in Iran.

Tehran soon blocked access to the Starlink website, and dummy activation links containing malware were planted in the Iranian Twittersphere in an apparent attempt to lure anti-government protesters.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani on Saturday said that by loosening communication-related sanctions but keeping up others, “America is seeking to advance its own goals against Iran with hypocrisy.”

He added that “attempts at violating the Iranian sovereignty will not go unanswered.”

Iranian tech experts working abroad have also joined the fray. Kooshiar Azimian, who heads the U.S.-based biotech company 310.ai and is a former Facebook engineer, regularly gives updates on his Instagram page on the latest method for accessing internet service in Iran.

Another U.S.-based Iranian computer scientist, Moshfegh Hamedani, has posted information on Twitter on how to bypass website filtering, and excoriated programmers working with the government.

A growing chorus of government officials are threatening punishment for those who take part in the unrest.

Iran’s hard-line judicial chief, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, said in a visit to police headquarters this week that protesters, whom he described as rioters, were “the foot soldiers of the enemies of the Islamic Republic.” Echoing previous harsh statements by President Ebrahim Raisi, he declared that those who defy authorities would be shown “no leniency.”

Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment tweeted that the government wanted to restrict internet access "so it can repress people in the dark."

The best way the United States and other Western allies can help Iranians, he wrote, is to keep the Iranian government from blocking access to the internet. Protesters' best hope of effecting change, Sadjadpour said, lies in "connecting with one another and the outside world.”

Special correspondent Khazani reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Bulos from Beirut.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Iran's nationwide demonstrations raise pressure on state





Protest in front of Iranian Embassy in Madrid

Wed, September 28, 2022 
By Parisa afezi

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iranian riot police deployed in Tehran's main squares on Wednesday to confront people chanting "death to the dictator" as nationwide protests over the death of young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in police custody piled pressure on authorities.

Amini, 22, from the northwestern Kurdish city of Saqez, was arrested on Sept. 13 in Tehran for "unsuitable attire" by the morality police who enforce the Islamic Republic's strict dress code.

She died three days later in hospital after falling into a coma, sparking the first big show of opposition on Iran's streets since authorities crushed protests against a rise in gasoline prices in 2019.

Despite a growing death toll and a crackdown by security forces using tear gas, clubs and, in some cases, live ammunition, videos posted on social media showed Iranians calling for the end of the Islamic establishment's more than four decades in power.

Protests have continued for almost two weeks, spreading to at least 80 cities and towns around Iran, from Tehran to the southeastern port of Chabahar.

"We will fight, we will die, we will take Iran back," chanted protesters in Tehran's Ekbatan neighbourhood, a video posted on Twitter showed.

A video from Chabahar showed riot police firing tear gas to disperse protesters, chanting "Death to (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei".

State media said 41 people, including members of the police and a pro-government militia, had died during the protests. Iranian human rights groups have reported a higher toll.

Iran's state news agency IRNA reported that the country's elite Revolutionary Guards launched missile and drone attacks at militant targets in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq on Wednesday.

A senior member of Komala, an Iranian Kurdish opposition party, told Reuters several of their offices were struck and there had been casualties and material damage.

Iranian authorities have blamed armed Iranian Kurdish dissidents for igniting the unrest in the country, particularly in the northwest where most of Iran's over 10 million Kurds live.

Videos posted on activist Twitter account 1500tasvir, with 145,000 followers, showed protesters gathering at Shiraz Medical School to protest against Amini's death.

Early Wednesday, a video showed protesters in Tehran chanting "Mullahs get lost!" "Death to the dictator!" and "Death to the leader because of all these years of crime!". Reuters could not verify the authenticity of videos on social media.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has called on Iran's clerical rulers to "fully respect the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, peaceful assembly and association".

In a statement from the U.N. human rights office on Tuesday, spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said that reports indicated "hundreds have also been arrested, including human rights defenders, lawyers, civil society activists and at least 18 journalists".

Amini's death has drawn widespread international condemnation while Iran has blamed "thugs" linked to "foreign enemies" for the unrest. Tehran has accused the United States and some European countries of using the unrest to try to destabilise the Islamic Republic.

(Additional reporting by Ali Sultan in Sulaimaniya; Writing by Parisa Hafezi and Michael Georgy, Editing by William Maclean)

Iran's anti-veil protests draw on long history of resistance










- Iranian women take part during the celebrations to mark the 2,500 anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire, young people in costume participate in parade for visiting dignitaries at Persepolis Iran, October 13, 1971. 

Iran's Islamic Republic requires women to cover up in public. But many Iranian women have long played a game of cat-and-mouse with authorities as a younger generation wears their veils more loosely or skirts requirements for conservative dress. (AP 

AMIR-HUSSEIN RADJY
Wed, September 28, 2022 

A young woman climbs to the top of a car in the middle of Mashhad, a conservative Iranian city famed for its Islamic shrines. She takes off her headscarf and starts chanting, “Death to the dictator!” Protesters nearby join in and cars honk in support.

For many Iranian women, it’s an image that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago, said Fatemeh Shams, who grew up in Mashhad.

“When you see Mashhad women coming to the streets and burning their veils publicly, this is really a revolutionary change. Iranian women are putting an end to a veiled society and the compulsory veil,” she said.

Iran has seen multiple eruptions of protests over the past years, many of them fueled by anger over economic difficulties. But the new wave is showing fury against something at the heart of the identity of Iran’s cleric-led state: the compulsory veil.

Iran’s Islamic Republic requires women to cover up in public, including wearing a “hijab” or headscarf that is supposed to completely hide the hair. Many Iranian women, especially in major cities, have long played a game of cat-and-mouse with authorities, with younger generations wearing loose scarves and outfits that push the boundaries of conservative dress.

That game can end in tragedy. A 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, was arrested by morality police in the capital Tehran and died in custody. Her death has sparked nearly two weeks of widespread unrest that has reached across Iran’s provinces and brought students, middle-class professionals and working-class men and women into the streets.

Iranian state TV has suggested that at least 41 protesters and police have been killed. An Associated Press count of official statements by authorities tallied at least 13 dead, with more than 1,400 demonstrators arrested.

A young woman in Tehran, who said she has continually participated in the past week’s protests in the capital city, said the violent response of security forces had largely reduced the size of demonstrations.

“People still are coming to the streets to find one meter of space to shout their rage but they are immediately and violently chased, beaten and taken into custody, so they try to mobilize in four- to five-person groups and once they find an opportunity they run together and start to demonstrate,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The most important protest they (Iranian women) are doing right now is taking off their scarves and burning them,” she added. “This is a women’s movement first of all, and men are supporting them in the backline.”

A writer and rights activist since her student days at Tehran University, Shams participated in the mass anti-government protests of 2009 before having to flee Iran.

But this time is different, she said.

Waves of violent repression against protests in the past 13 years “have disillusioned the traditional classes of society” that once were the backbone of the Islamic Republic, said Shams, who now lives in the United States.

The fact that there have been protests in conservative cities like Mashhad or Qom — the historic center of Iran’s clergy — is unprecedented, she said.

“Every morning I wake up and I think, is this actually happening? Women making bonfires with veils?”

Modern Iranian history has been full of unexpected twists and turns.

Iranian women who grew up before the overthrow of the monarchy in 1979 remember a country where women were largely free to choose how they dressed.

People of all stripes, from leftists to religious hardliners, participated in the revolution that toppled the shah. But in the end, it was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his followers who ended up seizing power and creating a Shiite cleric-led Islamic state.

On March 7, 1979, Khomeini announced that all women must wear hijab. The very next day — International Women’s Day — tens of thousands of unveiled women marched in protest.

“It was really the first counter-revolutionary movement,” said Susan Maybud, who participated in those marches and was then working as a news assistant with the foreign press. “It wasn’t just about the hijab, because we knew what was next, taking away women’s rights.” She didn’t even own a hijab at the time, she recalled.

“What you’re seeing today is not something that just happened. There’s been a long history of women protesting and defying authority” in Iran.

The hijab has been “the lightning rod of opposition,” explained Roham Alvandi, an Iranian historian and associate professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

“It represents the ability of the Islamic Republic to reach down and control the most private and intimate aspects of Iranians’ lives,” he said.

A century or more ago, strict veiling was largely limited to Iran’s upper classes. Most women were in rural areas and worked, “so hijab wasn’t exactly possible” for them, said Esha Momeni, an Iranian activist and scholar affiliated with UCLA’s Gender Studies Department.

Many women wore a “roosari” or casual headscarf that was “part of traditional clothing rather than having a very religious meaning to it.”

Throughout the late 19th century, women were front-and-center in street protests, she said. In Iran’s first democratic uprising of 1905, many towns and cities formed local women’s rights committees.

This was followed by a period of top-down secularizing reforms under the military officer-turned-king Reza Shah, who banned the wearing of the veil in public in the 1930s.

During the Islamic Revolution, women’s hijab became an important political symbol of the country “entering this new Islamic era,” Momeni said. Growing up in Tehran, she remembers “living between two worlds” where family and friends didn’t wear the veil at private gatherings but feared harassment or arrest by police or pro-government militias in public.

In 2008, Momeni was arrested and kept in solitary confinement for a month at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, after working on a documentary about women activists and the 1 Million Signatures Campaign that aimed to reform discriminatory laws against women. She was later released and joined the 2009 “Green Movement” protests.

Like Shams, she sees today’s wave of protests as shaking the foundations of the Islamic Republic.

“People are done with the hope of internal reform. People not wanting hijab is a sign of them wanting the system to change fundamentally,” Momeni said.

The 2009 protests were led by Iran’s “reformist” movement which called for a gradual opening-up of Iranian society. But none of Iran’s political parties — even the most progressive, reformist-led ones — supported abolishing the compulsory veil.

Shams, who grew up in relatively religious family and sometimes wore hijab, recounted how during the 2009 protests, she renounced the headscarf publicly. She found herself under attack by pro-government media, but also shunned by figures in the reform movement — and by her then-husband’s family.

“The major reason for our divorce was compulsory hijab,” she said.

As Iran has been besieged by U.S. sanctions and several waves of protests fueled by economic grievances, the leadership has grown insular and uncompromising.

In the 2021 presidential election, all serious contenders were disqualified to allow Ebrahim Raisi, a protégé of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to take the presidency despite record low voter turnout.

The death of Mahsa Amini, who hailed from a relatively impoverished Kurdish area, has galvanized anger over forms of ethnic and social — as well as gender — discrimination, Shams said.

From Tehran’s universities to far-flung Kurdish towns, men and women protesters have chanted, “Whoever kills our sister, we will kill them.”

Shams says Iran’s rulers have backed themselves into a corner, where they fear yielding on the veil could endanger the 44-year-old Islamic Republic.

“There is no way back, at this point. If the Islamic Republic wants to stay in power, they have to abolish compulsory veiling, but in order to do that they have to transform their political ideology,” she said. “And the Islamic government is not ready for that change.”

Iran security forces clash with protesters over Amini's death

 A newspaper with a cover picture of Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being arrested by Iranian morality police, is seen in Tehran

Tue, 27 September 2022 
By Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iranian riot police and security forces clashed with demonstrators in dozens of cities on Tuesday, state media and social media said, as protests raged on over the death of young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in police custody.

Amini, 22, from the northwestern Kurdish city of Saqez, was arrested on Sept. 13 in Tehran for "unsuitable attire" by the morality police who enforce the Islamic Republic's strict dress code.

She died three days later in hospital after falling into a coma, sparking the first big show of opposition on Iran's streets since authorities crushed protests against a rise in gasoline prices in 2019.

Despite a growing death toll and a fierce crackdown by security forces using tear gas, clubs and, in some cases, live ammunition, videos posted on social media showed protesters calling for the fall of the clerical establishment while clashing with security forces in Tehran, Tabriz, Karaj, Qom, Yazd and many other Iranian cities.

Rights group Amnesty International said on Twitter that Iran's security forces have responded to the protests with "unlawful force, including by using live ammunition, birdshot and other metal pellets, killing dozens of people and injuring hundreds of others".

State media branded the protesters "hypocrites, rioters, thugs and seditionists", while state television said police clashed with "rioters" in some cities.

Videos posted on social media from inside Iran showed protesters chanting, "Woman, Life, Liberty", while women waved and burnt their veils.

Videos on Twitter showed protesters chanting "Death to the dictator", a reference to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the Kurdish cities of Sanandaj and Sardasht, riot police fired at protesters, Twitter videos showed.

"I will kill those who killed my sister," chanted protesters in one of the videos from Tehran, while activist Twitter account 1500tasvir said: "The streets have become battlefields".

Further videos on social media showed protests continuing in dozens of cities after nightfall on Tuesday. A video widely shared on social media showed protests in Chabahar city in restive southeast Iran, with demonstrators torching government offices as gun shots could be heard.

"The crowed is upset over Mahsa Amini's death and allegations that a policeman has raped a teenage girl from the Baluch ethnic minority," a voice in video said. Reuters could not authenticate the footage.

The videos on social media could not be verified by Reuters.

State media also reported the arrest of women’s rights activist Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, the daughter of a former Iranian president and founder of the Islamic Republic, for "inciting riots" in Tehran.

To make it difficult for protesters to post videos on social media, authorities have restricted internet access in several provinces, according to Internet blockage observatory NetBlocks on Twitter.

GROWING SUPPORT

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights called on Iran's clerical rulers to "fully respect the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, peaceful assembly and association".

In a statement, spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said that reports indicated "hundreds have also been arrested, including human rights defenders, lawyers, civil society activists and at least 18 journalists".

Officials said 41 people, including members of the police and a pro-government militia, had died during the protests. But Iranian human rights groups have reported a higher toll.

The Iranian human rights group Hengaw said 18 people had been killed, 898 injured and over 1,000 Kurdish protesters arrested in the last 10 days, but estimated that the real figures were higher.

"Between Monday and Friday, more than 70 women have been arrested in Iran's Kurdistan. ... At least four of them are under age 18," Hengaw said on Tuesday.

Iran's judiciary has set up special courts to try "rioters", according to state media.

Over 300 Iranian Christians issued a statement supporting the nationwide protests.

Social media posts, along with some activists, have called for a nationwide strike. Several university teachers, celebrities and prominent soccer players have backed the protests while students in several universities have refused to participate in classes.

Meanwhile, Amini's death has drawn widespread international condemnation while Iran has blamed "thugs" linked to "foreign enemies" for the unrest. Tehran has accused the United States and some European countries of using the unrest to try to destabilise the Islamic Republic.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Additional reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Jonathan Oatis and Josie Kao)

People demonstrate against the Islamic regime of Iran in New York City

Demonstrators scuffle with riot police, during a protest following the death of Mahsa Amini, outside the Iranian Embassy, in Athens

A woman holds a placard during a protest following the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran, outside the Iranian Embassy in Nicosia,

Protests in Malta following the death of Mahsa Amini, in Valletta

"She was tortured": Mahsa Amini's 

family speaks out amid Iran protests

Ramy Inocencio

Mon, September 26, 2022 

The family of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in the custody of Iran's morality police, is speaking out as the anti-government protests sparked by her death grow louder.

As the country awaits a final coroner's report, Amini's father said she was beaten by the morality police, the enforcers of Iran's strict dress code. Amini's head covering was reportedly too loose when she was taken into custody.

Her cousin, Erfan Mortezaei, who lives in self-exile in Iraq, believes she was tortured.

"She was tortured, according to eyewitnesses," he claimed. "She was tortured in the van after her arrest, then tortured at the police station for half an hour, then hit on her head and she collapsed."

Thousands paid respects at Amini's burial in western Iran.

Iran's government is accusing the West, especially the United States, of fueling protester fury. The Foreign Ministry said Tehran will respond to "American violations of its sovereignty."

In response to Amini's death, protesters have stoned images of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"The old dictator is in his last days," Mortezaei said when asked what he would tell Khamenei.

The riots have been the biggest to rock Iran since 2019. Women, raging against rigid Iranian law, are illegally removing their head coverings and burning them. Men are joining them to protest a regime they all denounce as repressive.

At least 75 people have been killed, according to watchdog Iran Human Rights, with that number expected to rise.

12 arrested after clashes outside Iranian Embassy in London
 

Mon, September 26, 2022 

LONDON (AP) — British police said Monday that 12 people were arrested and at least five police officers were seriously injured after violent disorder broke out during protests outside the Iranian Embassy in London.

Large crowds had gathered all week outside the compound to protest the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in custody in Iran after she was detained by the country's morality police.

The Metropolitan Police force said most protesters had been peaceful, but on Sunday a group of activists sought to confront police and other protesters with different views.

Police said bottles and other items were thrown at officers trying to protect the embassy building, and that protesters also targeted the nearby Islamic Center of England. At least five officers were hospitalized with injuries including broken bones, police said.

Amini was arrested for allegedly breaking headscarf rules and died on Sept. 16. The Iranian police said she died of a heart attack and wasn't mistreated, but her family has cast doubt on that account. The London clashes came as protests over her death spread across dozens of Iranian cities, towns and villages.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Sunday it summoned Britain’s ambassador to protest what it described as a hostile atmosphere created by London-based Farsi language media outlets. The ministry alleged the news outlets have provoked disturbances and the spread of riots in Iran at the top of their programs.

Two women are asked to leave the area after stopping to clash with protesters outside Kilburn Islamic Centre in London, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022. The protesters were demonstrating against the death of Iranian Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, who died in Iran while in police custody, was arrested by Iran's morality police for allegedly violating its strictly-enforced dress code.

 (David Parry/PA via AP)

Unrest across Iran continues under state's extreme gender apartheid

Haidar Khezri, Assistant Professor, University of Central Florida

THE CONVERSATION
Tue, September 27, 2022 

In this Sept. 21, 2022, photo, Iranian demonstrators gather along a street in Tehran. 

AFP via Getty Images

Unrest continues to erupt across Iran following the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, who died after being arrested and reportedly beaten by Iran’s morality police.

The Iranian force took Mahsa (Zhina) Amini into detention on Sept. 16, 2022, for not wearing her hijab according to the rules.

As of Sept. 26, at least 41 people have been confirmed killed and hundreds have been arrested and wounded in protests that erupted after Amini’s death.

As a Kurdish-born scholar and a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Central Florida, I have previously written about gender in Middle Eastern cultures and Iranian protests.

With the exception of bland condemnations, the discrimination against women in Iran is often overlooked while the world focuses on limiting the country’s nuclear capabilities.

Some scholars and activists have criticized international law for its lack of initiative and public action in recognizing Iran’s systematic discrimination against women as gender apartheid and acting to prevent it.

But many discriminatory laws, including those forcing women to cover their head and face with a hijab, honor neither tradition nor religion and are applied to women of all ethnicities and faiths.

After all, Amini was not a Shiite woman by ethnicity or religion.

Iran’s gender apartheid

The 1979 Islamic Revolution established a republic that implements similar inhumane policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in South Africa under the government’s former brutal apartheid regime.

The laws and policies in Iran establish and maintain domination by men and the state over women and their right to choose their own clothing or obtain a divorce. Systematic gender inequalities are prescribed legally and enforced by the regime to deny the women the “right to life and liberty” and “basic human rights and freedoms,” which according to Article II of the United Nations’ Apartheid Convention in 1973, are considered “the crime of apartheid.”

For example, according to Article 18 of Iran’s Passport Law, a married woman still needs written permission from her male guardian to travel abroad.

Thousands of demonstrators stop traffic in Iran on Sept. 19, 2022, to protest the death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody. Getty Images

Women in Iran are unable to hold any positions within the judicial, religious and military systems, nor are they able to serve as members of the Assembly of Experts, the Expediency Discernment Council or the Guardian Council, the three highest councils in the Islamic Republic.

Women under law cannot be president or supreme leader of Iran. According to Article 115, the president of the Islamic Republic must be elected from among the “religious and political men.”

In addition, the Iranian state has added discriminatory features to the criminal code – one such feature is the principle that the value of a woman is one-half of the value of a man.

That principle applies in matters involving compensation for a killing and in what a son or daughter receives from a family inheritance. They also apply in the weight given to legal testimony or in obtaining a divorce.

Such laws, policies and practices continue to mark women as lesser citizens, legally and socially unequal.

Segregation in daily life

The state also has imposed systematic segregation in schools, hospitals, universities, transportation, sports and other major areas of day-to-day life.

For many decades, Iran’s gender apartheid had relegated women to the back of the bus with a metal bar segregating them from men.

Under the government’s direction, universities have set limits on women’s options and have banned them from many fields of study.

Iran has generally barred female spectators from soccer and other sports stadiums since the 1979 revolution.

Demonstrators in California hold signs at a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini. 

Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

Clerics play a major role in decision-making and have argued that women must be shielded from the masculine atmosphere and sight of semi-clad men during sporting events.

Under such discriminatory policies, the Persian terms such as za'ifeh, meaning weak and incapable, has found its way into Persian dictionaries as synonyms for “woman” and “wife.”

‘Women, life, freedom’

Iran’s notorious extrajudicial morality police have terrorized women for decades.

Like the articles of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, principles of the morality police are founded on an interpretation of canonical Shiite texts and are implemented through modern tools of control and prosecution.

People gather in Tehran on Sept. 19, 2022, during a protest for 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died while in police custody. 

Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

In international criminal law, specific unlawful acts that are committed within a system of oppression and domination are considered crimes against humanity.

As set out in the U.N.‘s Apartheid Convention, these crimes include denial of basic rights that prevent a racial group or groups from participating in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country.

Most known for the brutal regime in South Africa, apartheid comes from the Afrikaans word meaning “apartness.” It was the ideology that was introduced in South Africa in 1948 and supported by the National Party government.

The compulsory hijab is at the center of what I call Iran’s extreme gender apartheid, where a misplaced headscarf can result in up to 15 years in prison, lashing, fines and inhumane and unlawful arrest and death.

Several anti-compulsory hijab movements emerge every few years in Iran, such as in the case of Zhina Amini.

In the Kurdish language, her name originates from “jin,” the word for woman and shares a root with the word for life, “jiyan.”

Those Kurdish words are at the heart of the most used slogan by the Kurdish Female Fighters against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and by women across Iran today against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Add in “azadi” – the Kurdish word for freedom – and the slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” means “Women, Life, Freedom” and is resounding among protesters in streets throughout Iran and the world to dismantle the state’s gender apartheid.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Haidar Khezri, University of Central Florida. Like this article? subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

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