Iran battles inflation — and the hijab

The year 2017 ended on an ominous note for West Asia with the unemployed and disadvantaged in smaller cities and rural areas of Iran coming out into the streets, protesting against the rising prices of eggs and other foodstuff, and rampant unemployment. Tension and violence continue unabated in the other two perennially troubled areas — Gaza and Syria. While Europe is bursting at the seams trying to accommodate Syrian refugees, there is every indication that West Asia will continue to face violence, displacement and trauma in the new year.

The protests in Iran, which broke out on December 28 with anti-establishment rallies being taken out by teachers, workers, farm labourers and unemployed and disenchanted youth, were at first puzzling to West Asia watchers who couldn’t see any particular group of reformists or leaders mobilising the protesters. Beginning with the north-eastern city of Mashhad, the protests quickly spread to some 75 other places., This time the protests were not led by Tehran. They came from the smaller cities against the government’s failure to deliver better economic outcomes — such as lower inflation and the creation of more jobs, as was promised by President Hassan Rouhani after the nuclear sanctions were relaxed in 2015 following the nuclear deal with the US.

Of course the relatively moderate Rouhani government was quick to blame the protests on “foreign powers”, mainly Saudi Arabia and the US, accusing the former of direct involvement and condemning President Donald Trump’s tweets welcoming the protests. It responded by its own counter-rallies and used force against the protestors, mostly young unemployed, and in the initial round, 25 persons lost their lives.

While economic sluggishness and unaffordable food prices might have triggered the protests, the political dimension was soon evident. There were calls for Iran’s spiritual leader Ali Khamenei to step down. He has an uneasy relationship with the Rouhani, who swept the last election. Some protestors chanted slogans asking the government to worry less about Palestine and Syria and turn its gaze inward and at the suffering of the Iranian people. Many messages posted on the social media had traces of nostalgia for the monarchy and the late Shah of Iran.

After the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iranian women have had a troubled relationship with the hijab, with crazy penalties and even imprisonment for not covering their hair completely. So an important part of the ongoing protests is demanding freedom for women opposed to the hijab to discard it.

Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist and activist living in the US, gave the call to women opposed to the hijab to remove it, enjoy their unveiled hair and post pictures of themselves doing so on her Facebook page, My Stealthy Freedom. The page has already got over 1.08 million ‘likes’ apart from pictures of Iranian women, some with their hair blowing in the wind! Freedom comes in many shapes, and to feel the breeze in your hair, on your face, is certainly one of its most enjoyable forms!

Masih said this in an interview: “My mother wants to wear a scarf. I don’t want to wear a scarf. Iran should be for both of us.” She recalls how as a child, she was forced to wear the scarf: “As a kid, my brother was a symbol of freedom that I didn’t have. He was free to run in a green lovely farm” —something that was denied to her.

But on Sunday she posted a heartbreaking message on Twitter. Posting a picture of a beautiful young woman with her hair behind a veil, she tweeted: “Her name is Maryam Jafarpour. She was an engineer. She took part in #IranProtests. After being arrested, her parents received a call from the regime forces telling them to come and pick up their daughter’s dead body. She is one of the many brave Iranians that this regime killed.” Often the price of freedom is death. Nothing less.

So what lies ahead for Iran and its people?

The regime may frown on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praising the “brave people of Iran” for fighting for their rights, but you cannot keep down for too long a suppressed people, particularly in a country like Iran where violence has often erupted. The last major one was in 2009, when President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was re-elected in an election perceived to be massively rigged. The protests, in favour of the Opposition candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, were crushed mercilessly. But Ahmadinejad was a dictator; ironically the reformists who were expected to get some traction in the Rouhani government, have been sidelined, and they themselves have been most surprised at this uprising which seems to be headless and risen from the ranks in smaller cities.

Hopefully, that is why it may succeed, forcing the government to do something about the economy and warning hardliners to back off from forcing women to wear the veil. As Masih Alinejad says, it’s all about choice; veil for her mom and uncovered hair, fluttering in the breeze if she wants, for herself.

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