• As every year, the editorial staff of 20 Minutes accompanies you during the December holidays.

    And like every one at this time, we look back on the past year and we plan for the one to come.

  • Until December 31, find all the major events of 2022, from the most catastrophic to the coolest.

    In this eleventh episode, return to Iran where the regime responds fiercely to the demonstrations triggered by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.

    The 22-year-old died on September 16 after she was arrested in Tehran by vice police for an alleged violation of the country's strict dress code for women.

  • After more than 100 days of protests, there has been no 'real change' and women are still being 'punished in other ways', says Shadi Sadr, founder of London-based NGO Justice for Iran .

    And Tehran, already at odds with Western powers over its nuclear program, remains the country that executes the most people sentenced to death apart from China, notes Amnesty International.

    More than 500 people have been executed this year alone.

Over 100 days of protests in Iran.

In 2022, these revolts broke taboos and touched the ideological foundations of the Islamic Republic, whose leaders face an implacable desire for change.

Protests that erupted in mid-September following the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini reflect anger over economic hardship and social restrictions, analysts say.

Since its beginnings in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been regularly rocked by protests.

But this movement is unprecedented in its duration and the extent of the protest in all the provinces of the country, the participation of different ethnic groups and social classes and the direct calls for the end of the regime.

“The EU and the United States are a little disenchanted.

There is a disenchantment with the uprisings that were supposed to lead to a democratization of the countries of the Middle East ”… Focus on Iran which executes with complete impunity by @CecileDSZ https://t.co/aKvD3bZSfL

— Marion Pignot (@pignot1) December 27, 2022

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The morality police abolished

Portraits of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were burned, women openly marched through the streets without headscarves and demonstrators defied security forces.

Iranian authorities accuse hostile foreign powers of stoking the 'riots', including the United States, a sworn enemy of Tehran, but also other Western nations such as the United Kingdom or France, as well as opposition groups in exile.

The culmination of the crackdown, Iran in December executed two people in connection with the protests, attracting the wrath of the international community and new sanctions.

In early December, the Attorney General of Iran announced that the morality police had been abolished.

This feared unit was behind the arrest of Mahsa Amini in Tehran for violating the strict dress code imposed on women.

But the prosecutor's statement was immediately greeted with skepticism by activists, given the maintenance of the obligation for women to wear the Islamic veil in public.

There has been no "real change" and women are still being "punished in other ways", said Shadi Sadr, founder of the London-based NGO Justice for Iran.

And that did not change the main demand of the movement: "The demonstrators want the end of the Islamic Republic", she underlined.

Although their scale may have diminished in recent weeks, the demonstrations continue "every day throughout the country", says the NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR), based in Oslo.

More than 500 people executed this year alone

The regime is unable to put an end to this popular movement and "there is no turning back", declared Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the IHR.

NGOs accuse the authorities of committing gross human rights violations since the start of the movement, including extrajudicial executions, kidnappings abroad and the taking hostage of foreign nationals in the country.

Already at odds with Western powers over its nuclear program, Iran is also the country that executes the most people sentenced to death apart from China, notes Amnesty International.

More than 500 people have been executed this year alone, details the IHR.

Moreover, Iran has moved closer to Moscow since the start of the war in Ukraine at the end of February and provides cheap drones to Russian forces, while kyiv benefits from military and humanitarian aid from the West. .

“There is no turning back” possible

However, "never in forty-three years of history has the Iranian regime seemed so vulnerable," said Karim Sadjadpour, Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

At least 476 people have been killed by security forces since mid-September, according to the IHR.

Around 14,000 people have been arrested, according to the United Nations, including several figures who supported the protest movement, such as actor Taraneh Alidoosti and rapper Toomaj Salehi, who risk the death penalty if convicted.

Besides the executions of Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard, nine other people were sentenced to death, two of whom were granted a new trial.

our file on iran

For Kasra Aarabi, specialist in Iran at the Tony Blair Institute, the demonstrators think “that they are in the middle of a revolution and that there is no turning back” possible.

According to him, they are inspired by several leading figures of the movement such as Hossein Ronaghi, activist for freedom of expression, and dissident Majid Tavakoli, both released after their arrest, as well as women's rights activist Fatemeh Sepehri, who is still being held.

“I am sure we will win,” said human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who was in detention before the protests even started, in a message from Tehran’s Evin prison, sent by her family. in the European Parliament.

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