Crackdown Looming In Iran’s Sunni Majority Region

In the past two weeks, grassroot groups had called for gatherings on the occasion of Sadeh festival that has its roots in Zoroastrianism and dates back to before the Achaemenid Empire for at least 3 millennia. The mid-winter festival was celebrated with grandeur and magnificence in ancient Persia to honor fire and to defeat the forces of darkness, frost, and cold. Iranians used the symbolism to protest against the oppressions of the clerical regime. 

On Monday, in several cities across the country, people held gatherings around big bonfires and chanted slogans against the regime. The festival used to be celebrated mainly in cities such as Yazd and Kerman with a population of Zoroastrians, the followers of the pre-Islamic Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths. However, this year the event was tied to the uprising that has been ongoing since mid-September, when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was killed in custody of the hijab police. 

According to social media videos, Sadeh celebrations were held in Tehran, Tabriz, Izeh, Ahvaz, Shiraz, Kerman, Sanandaj, some regions in Hormozgan province, Esfahan (Isfahan), Malayer, Mashhad, and many other cities and towns.

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In several neighborhoods of Tehran, people set up fires, singing protest songs and chanting slogans against the regime and its ruler Ali Khamenei. In some cities, such as Izeh, people gathered at the graves of the protesters who were killed during the regime’s crackdown in rallies or in detention. 

The ceremonies were held despite intensified pressure on the Zoroastrian associations to keep the event as small and limited as possible but people who gathered Monday night were mostly non-Zoroastrians.

Since the beginning of the current wave of protests, the regime has tried to avoid every possible gathering, including funeral services or wakes, as they tend to morph into antigovernment demonstrations. Among Zoroastrian Iranians, the Sadeh celebration is as important as Nowruz, which marks the new year. 

In the Kurdish-majority city of Sanandaj, Sadeh celebrations were accompanied with rallies in protest against the arrest of two Sunni clerics in the city. Mamosta Loghman Amini and Mamosta Ebrahim Karimi Nanleh were arrested by the security forces earlier in the week. The two were the prayer imams of two Sunni mosques and had criticized the regime in support of the protests. Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a Norway-based Kurdish rights group, said the two Sunni clerics were "arrested by the security forces on Marivan Road without a court order and taken to an unknown place."

The Islamic Republic has recently stepped up itscrackdown on Sunni clerics and Sunni majority areas, where the protests have been going on regularly and in large numbers, unlike some other parts of the country where protesters hold sporadic and small gatherings. In Sunni-majority province of Sistan-Baluchestan, Mowlavi Abdolmajid Moradzehi, a cleric close to the outspoken Sunni Imam of Zahedan, Mowlavi Abdolhamid, was also detained in recent days. Rallies by Iranian Sunni Muslims in the city of Galikash, in the northern Golestan province, are also being held regularly outside the home of the city’s Sunni cleric Mowlavi Mohammad Hossein Gorgij, the deposed Friday Imam of Azadshahr.

Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), quoted Farshad Kazemi, the police chief as saying that "following the circulation of a video on social media which showed a woman singing “illegally” in a restaurant in Sarbandar, Mahshahr, an investigation was launched."

Singing by women in public is forbidden according to Iran’s Islamic laws.

"Police officers closed the restaurant after investigating the issue" and "a judicial case has been filed," added Kazemi.

In the last few weeks, numerous reports have been published about police sealing off businesses, restaurants, cafes and even in some cases pharmacies for not observing the mandatory hijab rules wither by employees.

Mohammad Sadegh Akbari, the Chief Justice of Mazandaran north of Iran, announced Sunday that "a pharmacy in the city of Amol was shut down due to improper hijab of a pharmacist."

In a video published on social media, a regime agent warns the pharmacist for not complying with the "mandatory hijab" and the pharmacist in return asks him to leave the premises.

Iranian regime has increased pressure on women for non-compliance with the mandatory hijab in a situation that the country has been the scene of nationwide protests since September 16, following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody for not wearing ‘proper hijab’.

The signatories, who are all incarcerated in notorious Evin prison in Tehran, in a letter expressed anger over the death sentences and physical, mental, as well as psychological torture and threats of execution by the regime agents in prisons.

The political female prisoners are Bahareh Hedayat, Narges Mohammadi, Sepideh Qolian, Alieh Motallebzadeh, Hasti Amiri, Noushin Jafari and Raha Asgarizadeh.

They have also voiced appreciation for those prisoners, such as Sepideh Kashani and Nilufar Bayani, who despite all possible dangers, have revealed the dimensions of the crimes committed by the Islamic Republic agents.

Nilufar Bayani, researcher, conservationist, and scholar, in a letter in 2018 wrote about “the most severe mental and emotional tortures, threats of physical torture and sexual threats [she faced].”

Bayani was convicted in 2019 of espionage by Iranian authorities in a closed-door trial in Iran, and received a 10-year prison sentence.

Last week, in a letter, Sepideh Kashani, one of the ecologists and environmentalists detained since 2018 based on accusations of spying for foreign governments, said her interrogators tortured and threatened her with sexual assault for over 1,200 hours during the eight months that she was held incommunicado.

The torture of prisoners is not limited to the protesters arrested in the current wave of nationwide rallies. The regime is known for its inhumane methods regularly reported by human rights groups.

According to the Iranian Writers Action Committee (IWAC), Behanz Amani has been temporarily released from prison on bail.

In a letter the American poets have called on the Islamic Republic not to send Behnaz Amini to jail again due to her health condition.

“We are a group of American poets who write in solidarity with Behnaz Amani and support her right to peacefully protest the brutal and extrajudicial persecution of her students and many others in Iran. We make this plea: Do not send Behnaz Amani back to prison, under any circumstances.”

IWAC says after her release, she received a diagnosis of aggressive cervical cancer. Her brutal 46-day long detention in the notorious Qarchak Varamin Prison near Tehran has contributed to critical postponement in her cancer diagnosis and treatment.

They have also warned that anyone who takes part in incarcerating Amani again will be held responsible for what happens to her.

In October, Behnaz Amani ran afoul of Iranian authorities after signing a statement by university professors protesting the arrest of students.

Just two days after signing the letter, Amani was interrogated by security forces and two days after that she was abducted in front of her house.

Bob Perelman, Barry Schwabsky, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Michael Palmer are among the poets who have singed the letter.

The couple – Amir Mohammad Ahmadi, 22 and Astiyazh Haqiqi, 21 – shared a video of themselves dancing Azadi Square in Iran’s capital Tehran to show support for the protests after the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in custody of the Iranian morality police.

They were arrested on November 10 when plainclothes agents beat and transferred them to ward 209 of the Ministry of Intelligence in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.

Besides the jail term, a two-year ban to use social media, and a two-year ban on leaving Iran has also been imposed on the couple. They have been charged with “encouraging corruption and public prostitution”.

The couple have also been charged with “colluding with the intention of disrupting national security and promoting propaganda.”

The two were deprived of having access to a lawyer, and their request to be released on bail was turned down.

The Islamic Republic has used draconian punishments in dealing with the protest movement.

Activists say regime forces have killed over 520 people and arrested about 20,000 so far. Four young men have also been hanged by the clerical rulers amid international outcries.