Protests in Iran
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Since mid-September, women and girls in Iran have been staging demonstrations against the regime. Social media has been full of images of female protestors cutting off their hair and removing their Islamic head-covering in open defiance of the security forces.
These protests have their roots in the arrest of a young woman called Mahsa Amini for minor infractions of the Islamic Republic’s dress code and her subsequent death in custody.
But there have been several waves of protest since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 - all of which have been successfully repressed. So, this time is it different? Is a regime that’s been in power for decades seriously under threat?
Joining David Aaronovitch in The Briefing Room are: Khosro Kalbasi, Iran analyst at BBC Monitoring. Azadeh Moaveni, Journalist and author of Lipstick Jihad. Eskandar Sadeghi, Lecturer in Contemporary Politics and Modern History of the Middle East at Goldsmith's, University of London Ali Ansari, Professor of History at St Andrews University. Sanam Vakil, Deputy Director of the Middle East programme at Chatham House.
PHOTO: Demonstrators in the Iraqi region of Kurdistan holding pictures of Mahsa Amini (Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.4 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich. You, me, the top experts, a big issue |
| 0:11.6 | and 28 minutes, all brought together in the virtual space that is the briefing room. |
| 0:17.3 | This week, what's behind the current protests in Iran and should the regime be worried? |
| 0:24.1 | We've all seen the images of people, mostly women and girls, protesting on the streets of Iran. |
| 0:30.6 | The movement even has an anthem of sorts, a song that went viral. |
| 0:36.0 | "'Bara' in the cooche of course, for' to be'hsiedan, be wakhths. that went viral. It's called for the sake of all the |
| 0:42.3 | sake of, and it's a long list of all the reasons Iranians have to protest. |
| 0:48.3 | The writer has been arrested. |
| 0:56.2 | These protests have their roots in the detention of a young woman for minor infractions |
| 1:00.8 | of the Islamic Republic's dress code and her subsequent death in custody. |
| 1:06.3 | But the last few years have seen waves of protests, all of which have been successfully repressed. |
| 1:11.6 | So this time, is it different? |
| 1:13.9 | Is a regime that's been in power since 1979 under threat? |
| 1:18.6 | Step into the briefing room to find out. |
| 1:25.1 | First into the briefing room with the who, what, when and where is Kozro Kalborsi, who covers Iran for BBC monitoring. |
| 1:33.3 | Kozro Kalborsi, can you just take us back to how these protests started? |
| 1:38.2 | On September 13, Iran's morality police arrested a 22-year-old woman from Iran's Kurdish ethnic minority, |
| 1:46.7 | Mahza Amini. |
| 1:48.1 | When they took her in, according to eyewitnesses and reports that rights groups have documented, |
| 1:55.5 | she was beaten and allegedly sustaining head injuries. |
| 2:00.2 | When she is taken into custody, a few hours later, |
... |
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