Woman, life, freedom: On the resistance that grows out of the necessity of life in Iran

There is a woman standing on an electrical cabinet. Suddenly she stands there. Alone in the crowd of people staring at her wide-eyed. She has taken off the white shawl. Put it on a long stick. Cranks the stick slowly over his head. In the heart of one of the most repressive states in the world, where no one and nothing can protect her. The year is 2017 and the picture of her is spreading all over the country, out into the world. In the coming months, more and more women begin to stand on electric cabinets, take off their scarves and wave them. At least 29 women are arrested.

There is a man sitting in a square under blazing sun. They have tied his hands to a flagpole. In front of him they have placed a water bottle that he cannot reach. He belongs to the Baloch ethnic group, one of the poorest and most discriminated ethnic minorities in Iran, some of whom lack identity documents, which, among other things, excludes them from education or healthcare. When he is killed by the regime in 2022, the image of him tied to the stake is spread around the world. Everywhere, inside as well as outside Iran, people are sitting on poles with "tied" hands, in solidarity with the Baloch people.

Her death becomes an opportunity to remind the world of the executions, of the prisons, of the torture, of the political prisoners

The hands are raised to the sky, music is heard from the speakers. The black-clad women dance, their bodies close together, their eyes closed, the movement of their feet at the grave. The clip is from earlier this year, after the January massacre when thousands of protesters were killed in the space of a couple of days. Instead of mourning, they dance at their children's graves. The clips are accompanied by the text: Fear a mother who dances on her child's grave. So also the most brutal form of tyranny is converted into a refusal to submit.

Four years ago, 22-year-old Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by the Iranian regime for alleged violations of hijab laws. In memory of her and the movement her death initiated, today the Iranian diaspora organizes film festivals, demonstrations, panel discussions, poetry readings and music programs. In Vancouver, London, Paris, Berlin, Marseille and Stockholm. Her death becomes an opportunity to remind the world of the executions, of the prisons, of the torture, of the political prisoners.

When the images of Jina's murder spread in 2022, the whole country rose in solidarity with her, from Balochistan to Kurdistan, from Tehran to Mashhad. The movement that took its name from the Kurdish slogan Jin, Jîyan, Azadî – Woman, Life, Freedom – quickly came to be about basic democratic rights, about the rights of minorities, about gender apartheid. The protesters demanded nothing less than the fall of the dictatorship.

Today, only four years later, even the war that led to increased militarization cannot force the women to wear the veil in the streets. Not because the regime backed down, the headscarf requirement remains in the law, but because the women, by paying with their bodies, acquired that right. I don't know if the battle is completely won but at this moment the women are victorious. With no possibility of real organization, they all seemed to realize one thing: they can arrest some but they can't arrest all.

If they arrest someone for dancing, everyone dances - if they arrest someone for showing hair, everyone shows more hair

For the Iranians, it seems that any form of repression can be turned into its opposite. When they arrest five young girls doing a Tiktok dance, social media is bombarded with videos of dancing people doing the same dance; dancing grandmothers, dancing men, dancing children. On the streets, in front of the stove, in the living room. When they judge a female musician for singing in public for 74 lashes, the internet is filled with other women who also sing in public and male colleagues come out and declare that they are ready to take her lashes.

If they arrest someone for dancing, everyone dances. If they arrest someone for showing hair, everyone shows more hair. If they silence someone's voice, everyone speaks even louder. If they kill your child, you turn the funeral into an indictment.

They take away from the regime its weapon, the power of repression, its purpose.

I think of resistance as something that occurs when the body is prevented from moving. As something that arises as a consequence of a will to movement but that meets an obstacle. I imagine that in a country like Iran where the repression is so total, the bodies are surrounded by walls on all sides. To move at all means bumping into something.

When my cousins ​​put on lipstick before going out, they resist. When they listen to Western music, they resist. When the oil workers film themselves cooling themselves with ice in the August heat, they resist. In a country with the world's fourth largest oil reserves, those who work with the black gold lack the most basic conditions.

To move at all becomes resistance, to live becomes resistance, to work becomes resistance. The resistance becomes a consequence of something else, a consequence of life, of living.

But if one of my people has bodies surrounded by walls, it is as if my other people here in Sweden are walking around in a large hall, seemingly without anything to run against. Not all, though. Not those who are forcibly deported or lose their jobs because of climate commitment. And yet powerlessness lies like a paralyzing blanket over the rest of us. Is it freedom that makes us so sleepy? Is there an inherent paradox in the very essence of democracy, so that the freedom for which some are willing to die seems to make the possessor a sleepy spectator?

In a country where you don't get hanged at dawn for taking part in peaceful protests, we don't really seem to know how to change the reality around us

One can object that the situation is not as acute here, that the desire for change is therefore not as strong. But I think that's only partially true. Everywhere I turn people are desperate. About the situation in southern Europe, where this summer we have seen apocalyptic scenes and internally displaced people fleeing the fires. Over the accumulated assets of the super rich. What are they really going for with so much money? About Sweden continuing to sell weapons to Israel during ongoing genocide. That our newly instituted criminal laws, according to the correctional service's own calculations, will sevenfold the number of prisoners and give us the largest imprisoned population in Europe, more per capita than in Russia (!).