Iranian women’s pioneering role in the November 2019 uprising.
One of the most stunning moments of Iran’s contemporary history emerged on November 15, 2019, reflecting the volatile state of society. The great upheaval was coupled with the Iranian women’s pioneering role in leading the widespread protests.
The protests rapidly spread to more than 200 cities in 29 provinces in just a few days, with anti-regime chants rapidly radicalizing against the mullahs’ supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
Even the state-run media acknowledged the Iranian women’s remarkable role as vanguards and leaders of the uprising. They wrote women played a leading role in the cells of four or five people.
The clerical regime had no option but to resort to a bloody crackdown on the uprising to preserve its rule. Despite the massive financial loss, the regime shut down the internet to crush the protests. The mullahs’ regime launched the largest onslaught on widespread demonstrations in the contemporary world.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet expressed alarm, adding the footage they received showed, “security forces shooting unarmed demonstrators from behind while they were running away, and shooting others directly in the face and vital organs – in other words shooting to kill. These are clear violations of international norms and standards on the use of force, and serious violations of human rights.”
Amnesty International also verified this “shoot-to-kill policy” in a report it published on May 20, 2020: “The fact that so many people were shot while posing no threat whatsoever shows the sheer ruthlessness of the security forces’ unlawful killing spree.”
The regime’s security forces deployed heavy machine guns, helicopters, and military tanks to crack down on the protests, thereby setting a new record in crime against humanity.
At least 1,500 people, including 400 women, were killed.
Women aged 14 to 60 among the dead and wounded.
Shabnam Dayani was crushed under the wheels of the State Security vehicle. Halimeh Samiri was tortured to death, and her body was abandoned in the street. Hosna Bameri, 3, was shot and killed in her mother’s arms.
An estimated 12,000 were arrested. Amnesty International published a shocking report on September 2, 2020, verifying the use of “widespread torture including beatings, floggings, electric shocks, stress positions, mock executions, waterboarding, sexual violence, forced administration of chemical substances, and deprivation of medical care.’
The report, Trampling humanity: Mass arrests, disappearances, and torture since Iran’s 2019 November protests documented the harrowing accounts of dozens of protesters, bystanders, and others who were violently arrested, forcibly disappeared, or held incommunicado, systemically denied access to their lawyers during interrogations, and repeatedly tortured to “confess.”
Amnesty International’s damning report said, “Iran’s police, intelligence and security forces, and prison officials have committed, with the complicity of judges and prosecutors, a catalogue of shocking human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, against those detained in connection with the nationwide protests of November 2019.”
November 2019 uprising is alive! The International Community must stand beside the Iranian people and women.
