Iran: protesters call for three-day strike

Uncertainty sets in in Iran. It is about the form that the protest movement that has been unfolding since September may take, as well as the future of the vice police, whose dissolution was announced on Saturday.

As recalled by the AFP news agency, it was the vice police who arrested Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, on September 13 in the capital Tehran. She was accused of not following the dress code of the Islamic Republic, which requires women to wear a veil in public. His death became known three days later. According to activists and her family, Mahsa Amini died after being beaten. But authorities attributed his death to health problems, which his parents denied. Her death sparked a wave of demonstrations during which the women who led the protest removed and burned headscarves while shouting “Woman, life, freedom”. Despite the repression that claimed hundreds of lives, the protest movement continues, including among men.

“Demobilization Maneuver”

“The vice police (…) has been abolished by those who created it,” Attorney General Mohammad Jaafar Montazeri said Saturday night, quoted by the Isna news agency on Sunday. “The best way to deal with the unrest is to pay attention to the real demands of the people,” most of which concern “life and economic issues,” a spokesman for the chairman of parliament said on Sunday. , Seyyed Nezamoldin Moussavi, quoted by Isna.

The announcement of the abolition of the vice police was received with skepticism by Iranians on social networks: one Internet user was afraid that another structure would take over his role, another recalled the social pressure exerted even on families. Journalist Wassim Nasr abounds in this direction on Twitter. “No, the Iranian regime does not hesitate because the vice police will be disbanded. This is just a demobilization maneuver,” he wrote. “There are no taboos in this genre of regimes, it is part of a range of political decisions and security issues,” he adds.

Protesters demand regime change

Whatever the future of this morality police, the current mobilization in Iran goes beyond that issue. As Parisian Mahnaz Shirali, a sociologist and author of Window on Iran: The Cry of a Gagged People, explained, this suppression should already be confirmed. But “the demands of Iranian society go further. It demands not only the abolition of the police or the wearing of the burqa, but also the departure of the entire regime.”

A call for mobilization for the next few days has also been announced. Protesters called for a three-day strike and mobilization in Tehran’s Azadi Square on Wednesday.

Doubt has already been raised about claims to abolish the vice police. According to Reuters, the prosecutor general’s statement was not confirmed by the Interior Ministry. State media even reminded that the Attorney General does not oversee the police. According to the state television channel Al-Alam, the prosecutor’s statements do not clearly indicate that the vice police will be disbanded.