Iranian Musicians Hold Protest Rally After Attack On Students
Iranian musicians have demonstrated outside the House of Music in Tehran in protest over security forces’ attack on students.
Iranian musicians have demonstrated outside the House of Music in Tehran in protest over security forces’ attack on students.
It follows the raid on Saturday on the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Fine Arts on the pretext of women not complying with the mandatory hijab.
Students and teaching staff were beaten up and some had their instruments broken.
On Monday, the board members of Iran House of Music slammed the violent behavior of security guards at the Tehran University faculty.
The Telegram channel of the Students' Union Councils reported that the security officers clashed with some female students. Demonstrators chanted slogans “Woman, Life, Freedom”, “Student Will Die, But Will Not Be Humiliated”, and “Death to the Leader”.
Iran's universities have been one of the main centers of protests during the nationwide uprising against the regime following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody last year. In an attempt to suppress the demonstrations, the security forces of the Islamic Republic have repeatedly attacked the universities and arrested over 700 students.
The repression of the protesting students in recent months has provoked widespread criticism by human rights organisations and governments around the world.
Ramin Pashaei, deputy chief of FATA, said Monday Cyber Police aims at “clearing the [Persian language] cyberspace of immoral content” and warned that any social media content considered “outside norms and against moral standards” would bring about prosecution.
Authorities accuse boutiques, beauty salons, modelling agencies, gyms and plastic surgery establishments of encouraging women not to wear the hijab by their “immoral” content. FATA on some occasions in the past has prosecuted them or forced them to shut down their accounts.
Last week an official of the “Basij-Militia of Retailers”, Gholamreza Hasanpour, told the semi-official Mehr News Agency that female sales staff should wear uniforms to work but have been given a “choice” of one hundred different designs to choose from.
Unveiled girl protesting against compulsory hijab by performing gymnastics on the streets of Boukan in western Iran.
Women’s defiance of hijab rules has a history as long as the Islamic Republic itself, but it has escalated to new levels since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini in custody of morality police for “improper hijab” sparked nationwide protests.
Protests gradually subsided after several months but defiance of hijab rules as a form of civil disobedience has forced the government to try to stop the anti-compulsory hijab movement by taking various measures.
Such measures include preventing defiant women from using public transportation, entering government offices and boarding planes, shutting down shops and shopping malls as well as various plans to “encourage and convince” them to wear the hijab such as billboards and banners extolling “hijab and chastity”.
One such banner put up by the ministry of Islamic Guidance and Tehran International Bookfair last week quoted the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy as saying that corruption, sexual derangement, and lack of hijab caused profusion of divorces in Europe. Another banner they have put up quoted 19th century French author Victor Hugo praising modesty of women and its allure for men.
“It's hilarious when you have to fake quotes from Tolstoy and Hugo about hijab because half of your own population is ignoring you,” London-based journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh tweeted.
Pressure on activists and prosecution of celebrity artists for defiance of hijab in public and through social media are among the other measures the regime has been employing to scare women into wearing the hijab.
Sepideh Rashno, a 28-year-old art student whose defiance of hijab rules and heated dispute with a hijab enforcer on a city bus landed her in prison in July last year, a few months before the Mahsa protests, was suspended from Alzahra University in Tehran due to "non-observance of the Islamic hijab" last week for two semesters.
"As a citizen, I have the right to choose the clothes I wear,” she wrote in response to the decision, adding that she planned to return to the university after her suspension “in my preferred outfit”, that is, unveiled.
Pundits have said the regime’s determination to reinforce strict hijab rules is political in nature. Vice President in Legal Affairs Mohammad Dehghan on Sunday confirmed such theories. “The Islamic Republic will not mean much if there is no hijab in the country,” he said.
On April 4 at a meeting with state officials Tuesday, Khamenei claimed that foreign intelligence services were encouraging Iranian women to disobey mandatory hijab.
“Discarding hijab is haram based on Sharia and also politically,” he declared. His declaration was a clear signal to authorities that they need to do anything it takes to re-establish control over women which has somehow waned following anti-regime protests.
“The order given by his excellency is clear,” Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf said a day after Khamenei’s speech while promising to give precedence to any hijab-related motion or bill.
Protestors gathered overnight outside the prison in Esfahan (Isfahan) where Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashmi, and Saeed Yaqoubi await their death sentence, having been found guilty in a trial condemned as a travesty of justice by human rights campaigners.
They were convicted over the death of two IRGC’s Basij militia members and a police officer in protests of November last year, in what Persian media have dubbed the ‘Isfahan House’ case.
Responding to social media calls on Sunday night, people gathered outside Esfahan (Isfahan) Central Prison hoping to stop the executions. Videos posted by activists show dozens chanting slogans in front of the prison, while gunfire was also heard as thick smoke caused by teargas enveloped the area.
Following the increase in the executions of prisoners in recent weeks, families of those sentenced to death held a protest rally outside the Judiciary’s office in Tehran’s Keshavarz Street on Monday, demanding an end to the killing.
A similar rally was held last week outside Iran’s largest prison in Karaj hoping for mercy by the regime but by sunrise the prisoners were hanged.
Opposition activists say the death penalty is being used against the Isfahan House three as an intimidation tactic to stop further protests.
Campaigners say the prisoners were tortured into confessions, and there is no reliable evidence against them. According to an audio file released on Sunday of Kazemi talking to his cousin, he was coerced into confession by threats to his family of rape and death.
Exiled prince Reza Pahlavi tweeted on Sunday night, saying, “We must not allow this murderous regime to take another innocent life and turn another mother into a mourner.”
Prominent activist Masih Alinejad said: “We should not allow the regime of crime and madness to take more young people from us and make more families grieving.”
Canada-based dissident figure Hamed Esmaeilion, whose daughter and wife were killed in the shooting down of Flight PS752 by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in 2020, tweeted, “When will the insanity stop? When will the free world stand behind its own values? How many more executions will it take for the world to stand up?”
Last week, Australian Senator Jordon Steele-John, a political sponsor of Majid Kazemi called on the Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong “to have an urgent meeting with her Iranian counterpart to do all they can to prevent the execution of Majid, which could happen at any moment”.
Iranian expatriate communities plan demonstrations against the executions in cities worldwide on Saturday, May 20.
Iran has always had a high number of executions but the number started to rise after President Ebrahim Raisi – the former head of the country’s notorious judiciary -- took office in August 2021.
The United Nations said last week that Iran has executed 209 people so far this year, calling the record "abominable".
