Iran's Regime Faces Growing Criticism
Still image from video posted on November 3, 2022 showing protesters throwing an explosive device at a banner depicting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, near the city of Isfahan.
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Text by: RFI Follow
3 mins
It was on September 16 that the demonstrations began in Iran with the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman arrested three days earlier in Tehran for wearing an improper veil.
For almost two months now, the protest has not weakened, despite the violent repression carried out by the regime: shooting of demonstrators, numerous arrests, but despite everything the movement continues.
And the regime faces criticism from within over its handling of these protests.
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Within the Iranian security forces, the repressive policy is increasingly criticized and in particular on social networks, as explained to RFI, Stéphane Dudoignon
,
researcher at the CNRS, specialist in Iran.
“
A certain bad mood of the troops, even of the officers of intermediate rank, begins to spread, in a completely anonymous way for the moment, with messages of protest
”, he notes.
There is also in places, according to him, “
an extremely relative zeal, a very great reluctance to fire on the crowd.
There is a hierarchical and therefore generational divide.
The reluctance to fire on the crowd will concern either soldiers, ordinary soldiers, or conscripts, or young officers: a generational divide between the base of the pyramid and its summit.
On the floor of the staff, we will indeed have a unit, in any case of facade, much more important.
This being the case, the calls for troop unity, which we hear more and more from this staff, are also an indication that mobilization is not self-evident and that in the garrisons, there is there is a certain reluctance to be associated with a purely repressive policy.
»
“The
religious institution is extremely divided
”
This unprecedented protest movement against the Iranian regime is directly aimed at the Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and, in general, the religious supporters of the regime.
On social media, Iranians are posting videos showing protesters knocking off mullahs' headdresses walking the country's streets.
"
There is a growing hostility everywhere towards a part of the religious establishment, even if this violence is not systematic and even if, we have seen, in very different regions of Iran, the imams, very great religious notables, speak out against the purely repressive treatment by the Islamic Republic and by the guide Ali Khamenei”,
explains Stéphane Dudoignon
.
During funeral ceremonies for the burial, or the fortieth anniversary of the death of demonstrators or demonstrators, Shiite funeral rituals have indeed associated the memory of the martyr, of Imam Hussein with cries of "Death to the dictator".
“Today, the religious institution is extremely divided, and a considerable part of it, either finds itself associated with the protest movement by these funeral ceremonies, or shows itself more and more aware of the threat that the politics of the any repressive power weighs on the whole of the religious institution in Iran today
”, specifies the specialist of Iran.
► To read also:
In Iran, restrictions on access to social networks are increasing
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