Amid nationwide calls to hold commemoration ceremonies for those killed forty days ago in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province, a new police commander has been appointed in the flashpoint region.
Hossein Ashtari, Commander of Iran’s Police, in a decree on Wednesday replaced Ahmad Taheri with Mohammad Ghanbari.
These changes are taking place following four consecutive weeks of protests after Friday payers in the provincial capital Zahedan.
Taheri was the commander of police forces in the province during the massacre on September 30 in capital Zahedan also known as “Bloody Friday” in which nearly 100 people were killed.
On Thursday, the Security Council of the province, dismissed the commander of Zahedan police and chief of a police base in the city to calm the situation.
In response to these dismissals, the Sunni Imam of Zahedan, called the move “inadequate” but “a right act” demanding the formation of an independent fact-finding committee to deal with the Bloody Friday massacre.
Last Friday protests took place in the town of Khash in the province and dozens were killed and injured after security forces opened fire at demonstrators.
Meanwhile, the anonymous groups called Youth of Tehran and Tabriz neighborhoods in a statement called on citizens to stage fresh protests Wednesday afternoon to express solidarity with people in Sistan and Baluchestan.
When he scored a goal in the final of the Intercontinental Beach Soccer Cup at Cottage Beach in the United Arab Emirates November 6, instead of the usual display of his joy Iranian player Saeed Piramoun made a gesture of cutting his hair, a symbolic act in solidarity with women protesting forced hijab in Iran. With his goal Iran won the match against Brazil 2-1 and the championship of the competitions.
The “hair-cutting” gesture has become an international symbol of solidarity with Iranian women and the protest movement with many international athletes and celebrities posting images of themselves re-enacting the move.
Authorities have made serious threats against athletes and other celebrities to stop them from public displays of solidarity with protesters but to no avail.
Many Iranians have hailed Piramoun, an ethnic Baluch from the southeastern port city of Chabahar.
“These symbolic gestures attract global attention to the protests and hit [the regime] domestically,” a tweet after the match said.
Another Twitterati opined that similar actions by sports teams and athletes may force the Islamic Republic to forsake the Qatar World Cup to avoid international disgrace. Iran will be playing its first match against England on November 21.
Without naming Piramoun in its statement Monday, Iran’s Football Federation vowed to discipline those who display their political stances in sports arenas. “Those who have not abided by professional and athletic ethics,” the statement said, would be punished according to regulations.
The federation’s exhortation against involvement in politics is in stark contradiction with its own pressure on athletes to avoid competing with Israelis in international sports competitions, even at the cost of being eliminated from the games or losing titles.
Less than a month ago Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised Iranian athletes who refuse to play against Israelis, and said not competing with Israeli athletes is “a victory” in itself.
Piramoun was not alone in his protest action. His teammates had unanimously refused to sing along when the Islamic Republic’s anthem was played before the semi-finals and at the awards ceremony. They stood with their arms crossed without showing any signs of celebrating their win. The state television (IRIB) hastily cut its live reporting short to prevent people from receiving the team’s message of solidarity with protests.
Authorities have tried to distort the meaning of such gestures in other instances when individual athletes and sports teams displayed less obvious gestures of solidarity with protesters than Piramoun’s, such as refusing to show any signs of celebration for scoring goals or winning games.
The state TV anchor last week claimed Esteghlal FC players’ refusal to cheer when they won this year’s Super Cup was a sign of respect for those killed in a shooting attack in Shahcheragh Shrine in Shiraz for which ISIS apparently took responsibility.
Many Iranians suspect the government of complicity with ISIS in the attack, in the least, to create its own narrative and martyrs. The Shahcheragh incident, they claim, was meant to distract attention from the opposition’s protests and those killed in them or justify harsher suppression of the protesters who, the government claims, have caused insecurity in the country.
The mourning ceremony for Nasrin Ghaderi turned into a scene of protest in the western city of Marivan where residents chanted anti-regime slogans.
Ghaderi, 35, who was a philosophy doctoral candidate in Tehran died on Saturday after being beaten by security forces with baton during Friday’s protests.
A video received by Iran International shows a girl cutting her hair at the grave of this young woman, as a symbolic act against forced hijab.
Iran's official news agency IRNA has dismissed media reports that Ghaderi was killed with baton strikes, saying she was "living her normal life" when her family suddenly lost touch with her, and once their son-in-law broke into her residence in Tehran, they found her dead.
In the meantime, several calls for protest have been issued for Wednesday in Zahedan and other cities on the occasion of the 40th day after “Bloody Friday of Zahedan”.
The Bloody Friday in Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan and Baluchestan took place September 30, when security forces killed at least 93 people, and injured hundreds more. Zahedan is one of the few Sunni-majority cities in predominantly Shiite Iran.
Videos received by Iran International also show students in various Iranian universities, including Beheshti, Sharif, Kordestan Medical Sciences and Babol Noshirvani staged sit-ins on Tuesday.
Amid high inflation and an economic crisis, a group of retired teachers and civil servants gathered in front of the Planning and Budget Organization in Tehran to demand their unpaid pensions and benefits.
Another video shows a protester setting fire to a Qassem Soleimani banner. Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) extra-territorial Quds Force, was killed in Baghdad along with nine others in 2020 by a drone strike ordered by then-President Donald Trump.
The Islamic Republic and its supporters have portrayed Soleimani as a beloved hero, but protesters who want to topple the regime regard him as a war criminal who was responsible for killing both Iranians and others, such as Syrians during that country’s civil war.
Since September, people have destroyed Soleimani’s statues and pictures including in his hometown to show anger at regime’s propaganda.
A hardliner member of the Islamic Republic parliament called the move an “anarchic hate crime” that is becoming a public issue, he said.
Ali Asghar Annabestani said Tuesday that “the enemy has very cleverly turned people's protests into an anarchist riot, and protesters break all the boundaries that can be sacred for human society.”
“The people and government do not tolerate doing this to a national hero, so the security organizations must step in and prevent such acts. Destroyers should be identified and punished and then introduced to all people,” added the MP.
In another development, Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of dissident figure Mirhossein Mousavi, in a message demanded the release of imprisoned students and an end to threats, suspensions and expulsions of schoolchildren. Stating that “protest is the nation's right,” she added “Respect the youth, don't kill the nation's children and listen to the nation's voice.”
Zahra Rahnavard’s husband Mirhossein Mousavi, who has been under house arrest since February 2011, was Iran’s Prime Minister from 1981 to 1989. He was a candidate in the disputed presidential election in 2009 and challenged the results leading large protests for months before he was arrested and put under house arrest without a trial. His wife Zahra Rahnavard and another candidate Mehdi Karroubi suffered a similar fate as all three were accused of “sedition” against the regime.
Reports say after darkness fell on Tuesday, people in Tehran began chanting slogans on rooftops and at their windows, while people in the flashpoint Kurdish city of Sanandaj in the west took to the streets lighting fires and chanting antigovernment slogans.
Tossing the turbans of clergymen as they are walking in streets is now part of the current wave of antigovernment protests across Iran, which started as a reaction to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in custody of hijab police. Younger Iranians tired of government attempts to force them to observe the mandatory Islamic dress code and a restricted lifestyle, began protests and disobedience in mid-September.
In recent weeks, people have started knocking off or stealing the turbans worn by clerics as they are traditionally seen as the symbols of the Islamic Republic, no matter their political inclination.
Turbans as well as other Islamic attires have been used in Iran even before the Islamic Revolution but the styles and quality of the cloth used changed with the advent of the Islamic Republic and the rise to power of the mullahs. One of the new fashions is called crown-style turban, in which the front side of the turban is a bit elevated.
There are some people on social media – even from the anti-regime camp – that describe the move as not totally civil and against personal freedoms, but most are of the opinion that this is only a show of defiance against the country’s strict rules that justify violence against women deemed as loosely veiled in public.
Ironically, in a society where women felt insecure over their appearance, it is time that mullahs understand how women felt for the past 40 years, proponents of ‘turban tossing’ say. Some argue that if the mullahs were arrested violently on streets, taken to a detention center humiliated and threatened, and were not allowed to leave, that is when they would better feel how women were treated on streets by the ‘morality police’ all these years.
Masih Alinejad, one of the first Iranian anti-hijab activists, says that clerics had it coming after harassing women in public over hijab for years.
Some of the protesters are even having fun with it, creating a fake federation for it and calling it a new sport. They even went so far that they came up with different categories and scoring criteria for the sport such how long the turban stays in the air and how far it goes before hitting the ground.
The twitter account of the ‘federation’ now has over 30 thousand followers, so it is safe to say that this is becoming a popular sport. Some social media users say Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is the final target in the game of turban tossing.
The phenomenon has forced many clerics to tie their turbans under their chins or use other head coverings to keep them on their heads as they walk in the streets. People are making fun of that too with new fake inventions that can help the clergy keep their turbans in place.
This new addition to the ongoing protests has caused a stir among regime officials and has even made Iraqi Shia cleric and politician Muqtada al-Sadr worried that the trend may spread to his side of the border as a form of protest against Islamic autocracy. He released a statement to condemn the act after many Iraqi young people started to dare their friends on social media to flip some turbans.
Something has changed in Iran with the death of Mahsa Amini. People are less and less afraid of the regime. A common scene on the streets is now a woman who has unveiled in public because she is tremendously courageous and a cleric who has removed his turban out of fear.
