Iranians Face Brutal Government Crackdown
ABC Note: The audio version of this radio segment can be accessed at the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The following text is a transcript of the segment.
Annie Guest: Today marks two years since the death of Mahsa Jina Amini. The 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman died after being arrested by the Iranian government's so-called morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly. Her death sparked nationwide and global protests known as the Women Life Freedom Movement and spurred talk of another revolution. But two years on, Iranians are facing increased surveillance and a harsh crackdown for unveiling. Nassim Khadem reports.
Nassim Khadem: That's the voice of Zara Esma-eili. She's a young Iranian artist who was last month arrested and jailed after she posted a video singing in public without the mandatory hijab. Bahar Ghandehari from the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran says women in Iran are still under government fire.
Bahar Ghandehari: Singing for women in public is banned, let alone doing it without the mandatory hijab. And so she's been arrested for weeks now and we haven't heard any information about her.
Nassim Khadem: Roya Boroumand is another human rights activist based in Washington. She says women are clear targets, but that Iran's government is also shutting down those using social media to protest.
Roya Boroumand: We have had a very serious crackdown on women who are unveiled, facial recognition, multiple summons, confiscation of cars and detentions, fines, repeated fines. But also we have a crackdown against posting on the internet, people posting photos of themselves unveiled or posting anything that bothers the state.
Nassim Khadem: Roya Boroumand says there's a clear generational divide in women who are being defiant.
Roya Boroumand: The younger women protesting and resisting. So you know, they don't want to go back. The older women who have the experience of the 1980s and 1990s, they don't want to relive that experience. So they are more cautious. They used to not take their scarves even with them in their handbags. Now they take it or they put it on their shoulders or avoid areas where they know there will be more vigilantes.
Nassim Khadem: Amnesty International campaigner Nikita White also says the regime has intensified its use of the death penalty. She says at least 853 executions were recorded in Iran in 2023 and more than 400 have been killed so far this year.
Nikita White: The people who are being executed are being executed after facing horrifically unfair trials. Many of them are reporting torture and ill treatment.
Nassim Khadem: Nikita White says for the first time in a long time, Iranian women are facing capital punishment.
Nikita White: A woman human rights defender named Sharifeh Mohammadi was sentenced to death in June this year only because she stood up for women's rights, for workers' rights and campaigned against the death penalty. And this is pretty unprecedented in Iran even though protesters have been executed. It's really rare to see women's human rights defenders being sentenced to death.
Nassim Khadem: Until a few months ago, Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehiwas facing the death penalty for his music which overtly calls out the regime's human rights abuses. That penalty was overturned following an international campaign to save his life. But Nik Williams, a campaigner at the Index on Censorship, says Toomaj Salehi, who was severely tortured during his previous arrest, needs to be released.
Nik Williams: He should not be freed just for the fact that he shouldn't be in prison. But it's now to the point where he needs to be freed so he can get the medical treatment he needs to ensure that he can live a full life unhindered by any long-term impacts from his mistreatment in prison.
Nassim Khadem: Centre for Human Rights in Iran's Bahar Ghandehari says despite the harsher crackdown, Iranians continue to fight back.
Bahar Ghandehari: We may not see a lot of street protests right now, but we are seeing a quiet revolution happening inside the country where young people and women and people from every background are basically taking part in small acts of resistance.
Annie Guest: Bahar Ghandehari from the New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran, ending that report from Nassim Khadem.