‘We want them gone’: Across generations, Iranians struggle for change
By Sanam Mahoozi
October 12, 2022 at 2:00 a.m. EDT
When her classmates organized a protest at their university in Tehran, the young woman decided to join. It would be safer there than on the streets, she thought, where demonstrators were being shot at and beaten by Iranian security forces. And she felt she had to do something.
“For us women, life is a constant battle and struggle,” the 20-year-old student told The Washington Post.
There were only 10 of them protesting that day, chanting, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” avoiding the more aggressive slogans calling for the downfall of the government. It didn’t matter. Anti-riot police soon swarmed the campus, she recalled, sending the students running for cover.
“I feel rage and loathing for the way people are being treated,” she said.
The protests that began over the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s notorious “morality police” have turned into a full-fledged anti-government movement, with chants of “death to the dictator” echoing in cities across the nation. The Post spoke to four Iranians in the capital, Tehran, about the uprising and how it is transforming a country long ruled by fear. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals by the authorities.
“We want them gone. I ask God every day to somehow demolish this regime,” a 53-year-old woman told The Post.
In a series of voice messages, she related how her son had recently been hit by a bullet as he tried to run away from security forces.
“When I saw my child in pain with blood over his body, I felt destroyed,” she said, explaining that she takes anti-anxiety medication during the day and sleeping pills at night to cope with the emotional strain.
Her 30-year-old son has joined the protests, but on that day he was a bystander. He was on a run with a friend when they heard men shouting, he said. As they approached, they saw police attacking a crowd of protesters that had gathered under a bridge.
“We were lucky we were runners, so we managed to get away faster than other people, but that didn’t stop me from getting shot in the buttock,” he told The Post from his home, where he was recovering.
The Post could not independently verify his account, but it is consistent with reports of the Iranian government’s widening crackdown. Dozens of protesters have been killed, including at least 19 children, hundreds injured and thousands arrested. Reporting restrictions make the true toll difficult to verify. Security forces have fired live ammunition at protesters, misused tear gas and water cannons, and brutally beaten people with batons, according to Amnesty International. Activists, journalists and lawyers have been rounded up. But the repression has not crushed the movement.
Over the course of the past month, the days in Tehran have taken on a strange but familiar pattern, said the man, who works as a personal trainer.
“You don’t feel the revolutionary rage as much in the mornings because people need to work to feed their families,” he said.
But in the afternoon, drivers start honking their horns in solidarity with the protesters. As night sets in, the man said, people take to the streets, knowing it will be harder for security forces to recognize them in the darkness. And then, before dawn, he and others wake up early to chant “death to Khamenei” from inside their homes — a reference to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — even as government agents roam the streets listening for signs of dissent.
“I had to try a few different places to join these chants because there are actually people monitoring these houses,” the man said. “We have to turn off all the lights when we chant.”
His mother said she panics every time he leaves the house, knowing he could be killed or injured. “But I don’t want to stop him,” she said, because “then what kind of future are these kids going to have?”
“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid every day, but the odd thing is that my feeling of hope is somehow more dominant,” she told The Post. “It’s like we have nothing left to lose.”
Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said the anger and frustration driving the protests is broad and deep, and felt across generations.
“Crowds aren’t individually as big [as in past protests], but in many ways they are more determined, with a sense that the regime must change,” he said. “Youth are in many ways in the forefront, but there are many different groups coming together.”
The trainer said he spends most of his days trying to find a stable internet connection in Tehran — which he needs to teach fitness classes remotely — but that has gotten “20 times harder” since the government started throttling internet service. Despite the obstacles put up by the state and the deadly force it has used against protesters, he is confident the movement will keep growing.
“The breaking point is near in Iran, and a day will come soon that the crowds will be too large for the system to control,” he predicted.
Others have more modest hopes. Another woman in her mid-50s, a mother of two, said her life has been marked by turmoil — first the upheaval of the 1979 revolution, then the trauma of the Iran-Iraq War, followed by decades of economic and social struggle.
She doesn’t consider herself a political person, but the violence unleashed by the government has shocked her.
“Everyone is depressed and melancholy, no one is smiling and there is no sign of life; it’s like a ghost town,” she said of walking through the capital in the mornings.
Her daughter has now joined the demonstrations at her university. She and the other protesters across Iran are fighting for freedom, her mother said, noting that freedom means different things to different people.
What did it mean to her?
“Freedom is when you don’t have to constantly worry that someone is going to bring you the news of your child’s death,” she answered.
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