A Look at Iran's Protest Movement Four Months On

[marmar]

A Look at Iran’s Protest Movement Four Months On
Iran’s rulers have been brutal in their response to ongoing protests in the country. Now, fewer and fewer people are taking to the streets. But for how long will the regime retain the upper hand?

By Monika Bolliger und Christoph Reuter
20.01.2023, 19.46 Uhr


(Der Spiegel) A man kneels at a grave surrounded by mourners. Someone hands him a photo, which he holds up in the air, kissing it with a pained look on his face. The small crowd around him shouts lamentations as a man plucks the strings of a lute. The video is said to show the grieving father of Mohammad Mahdi Karami, a 22-year-old karate master who was hanged by the regime on January 7.

The Iranian regime has responded mercilessly to the protests that have flared up across the country since last autumn. Tehran has thus far executed four people in connection with the revolt, and at least 23 more prisoners are facing death, according to Amnesty International. A search for information about those on death row leads to the biographies of talented young people who, if they lived somewhere else, would have a world of opportunity in front of them.

Iran’s Leaders Exposed

The death sentence against physician Hamid Ghareh-Hassanlou, on the other hand, was overturned on January 7 – allegedly because of procedural errors. According to witness accounts, Hassanlou had been traveling in a car and had stopped to help an injured militant with the regime’s Basij militia. He was then later sentenced to death for the murder of that same man.

All of the death sentences against demonstrators have been handed down without even a hint of due process, with some resting on confessions extracted under torture. Some verdicts have been changed just as arbitrarily. Iran's regime-loyal judiciary grants both death and resurrection. Their motto seems to be: Be afraid and you may hope.

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Has Fear Prevailed?

There can be no talk of a victory for the regime, says Mohammad Reza Nikfar. The dissident, who once earned his doctorate in Cologne with a thesis on the philosopher Martin Heidegger and is now the editor-in-chief of the Amsterdam-based exile radio station Zamaneh, believes "a stalemate" has ensued. He says both sides – the regime and the protesters – have achieved something, but neither has won. ...............(more)

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/has-iran-s-regime-won-a-b5b510ba-47bf-40b6-a4af-a446a8d4817b