Protests Continue as Defiance Grows in Iran
By Phil Pasquini
Washington: Today (Saturday, November 5) several hundred demonstrators rallied at the upscale Washington Harbor along the Potomac River in Georgetown where speakers implored the Biden administration to stop their negotiations with Iran. The unified crowd stood in solidarity for regime change and called for an end to the bloodshed of protesters.
While speakers addressed the crowd in Farsi, their message was not lost on those walking through the busy promenade protest signs expressed the sentiments and disgust many Iranians have suffered these past four decades.
As the Iranian regime becomes more desperate to restore “order” across the nation with daily anti-hijab demonstrations, they have become more deplorable in their brutality to gain control.
Last Saturday Hossein Salami, commander of the Revolutionary Guard warned protesters ominously with his statement of “Do not come to the streets. Today is the last day of riots.” It has been reported since then police and soldiers have been shooting indiscriminately at occupied apartments, homes and buildings while destroying cars and other transport conveyances on the street as part of a campaign to intimidate residents from continuing their demonstrations by staying safely inside.
The unrest has continued unabated however since September 16 in the aftermath of the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who was arrested by the Guidance Patrol (morality police) for wearing her hijab “improperly” while visiting Tehran. Amini died while in police custody that they listed as the result of a “heart attack.”
Her death has prompted women across Iran to act in calling for “Woman, Life, Freedom” a mantra to end the more than 40 years of “gender apartheid” in suppressing their rights and freedoms under the strict prevue of the clerics’ regime.
Since the beginning of the protests, 250 participants have been killed, among them 34 children, while thousands of participants have been arrested and jailed in special Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) prisons where they have been subjected to torture, rape, and beatings.
One of those arrested was 22-year-old Mohammad Ghobadloo, accused of “corruption on earth” for his participation in a protest critical of the regime. After a brief “trial” in which he was not allowed to be represented by a lawyer and was unable to offer a defense, he was condemned to death. The show trial was meant to warn others in a desperate move by the regime to attempt to regain control through intimidation.
The continued unrest and brutality of the crackdown has inspired activists around the world to take to the streets in calling for regime change while showing solidarity with the protesters in Iran.
Report and photos by Phil Pasquini
(Phil Pasquini is a freelance journalist and photographer. His reports and photographs appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.ink. He is the author of Domes, Arches and Minarets: A History of Islamic-Inspired Buildings in America.)
