Mana Shooshtari remembers the moment she heard about Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman who died in the custody of Iran’s notorious “morality police.”
Shooshtari, 22, was scrolling through Instagram when she saw a post from her best friend about Amini, who was detained for allegedly violating Iran’s conservative dress code. “My stomach instantly dropped,” Shooshtari said recently at an Iranian American civic leadership conference at the University of California at Los Angeles, organized by the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans.
Since then, Shooshtari has taken to Twitter and Instagram to highlight Iran’s ongoing protests, which were sparked by Amini’s death. Dozens of people — including several teenagers — have been killed by the country’s security forces while protesting the systemic oppression of women in the country.
She has been using social media to “amplify videos and photos that are coming out of Iran that showcase the sheer brutality of the regime and just how courageous the protesters are being,” she said.
Across the United States, many young Iranian Americans are doing the same. Some have taken to social media to support the Iranian activists; others are joining and organizing demonstrations calling for change. They are fueled, they say, by a sense of justice and a desire to be part of what feels like a potentially pivotal moment in Iran’s history.
“I never thought in my lifetime that I could see another revolution,” said 27-year-old Los Angeles native Roxanna Ameri, who was drinking tea at the Persian Gulf Bakery, Cafe and Wine bar one recent evening.
Ameri grew up in “Tehrangeles,” a community of Iranian immigrants in L.A. The Persian community in Southern California — with enclaves in Westwood and Orange County — is the largest outside of Iran.
Signs of solidarity with Iranian protesters pepper the neighborhood. Some local businesses have been flying the large, tricolor Iranian flag from before the country’s 1979 revolution, emblazoned with a yellow lion, a symbol that has come to signify opposition to Iran’s theocratic regime, instead of a red takbir, a symbol on the flag of the country’s current Islamic republic.
At Persian Gulf, Iran’s pre-Islamic Revolution flag is draped over a leather sofa and table carefully arranged with roses and candles. The memorial was assembled by Persian Gulf’s owner and longtime Iranian pro-democracy activist, Roozbeh Farahanipour. Photos of the six young women who were killed during the uprising adorn the table.
Ameri said she is not simply moved to act because she is Iranian. “While I certainly have a personal connection and interest in the culture that raised me,” she said, “my real conviction stems from how inspired I’ve been by the sheer fearlessness of these young girls who are quite literally risking their lives every day fighting for their basic freedoms.”
For some young Iranians in America, particularly those with close ties to the country, the protests have also created a sense of fear.
Delbar Hamzehpour, 23, an Iranian student in Los Angeles and an employee at Persian Gulf, struggled to use the internet while visiting Iran this fall. “I couldn’t open my WhatsApp,” she said. She participated in some of the recent protests, which she called “horrifying.”
But she was also inspired by what she was seeing. “It seems like there’s a new revolution.”
Arman Karshenas, 24, a University of California at Berkeley student from Tehran, said he has been worried about his friends in the country. “I sent one of my best friends back in Iran a message six days ago and I got a reply yesterday,” he said. “You have no idea, with another day, if something has happened.”
Others have focused on activism.
Students across the country have been mobilizing around the cause, including at universities in South Carolina, Maryland, Ohio and Michigan. Samin Aayanifard, 28, a Michigan State University student who is president of its Iranian Student Association, said the group has posted extensively on social media and organized multiple demonstrations in support of human rights in Iran the past few weeks.
These young Iranians say the activism is important because it raises awareness, especially among people who aren’t familiar with the crackdown.
“I was just shocked by how silent, in general, my non-Iranian friends were on social media about this subject,” Ameri said. “I would have expected them to be a little bit more vocal about such a massive women’s rights movement. However, it’s pretty hard to be vocal about something that you’re not educated on.”
That’s why Ameri, in addition to attending protests and organizing events in L.A., has taken to Instagram to engage her friends in supporting the cause.
“I think if you’re someone who is afraid that if you just post about it, but don’t do anything, you’re almost doing nothing. That’s not true,” she said. “Even if you post one thing about this, even if you just inform yourself a little bit, it makes an impact.”
Elham Yaghoubian, a veteran Iranian American author and activist based in L.A., helped organize the 1999 pro-democracy student demonstrations in Iran with Persian Gulf owner Farahanipour. Yaghoubian said she is disappointed that U.S. elected officials have done little to support Iranians protesting the regime.
“Officials calling themselves women rights’ activists … are pretending they’re fighting for women’s rights, but none of them open their mouths or show their support,” she said.
Several U.S. officials, including President Biden, have expressed their support of the protests.
Bijan Khalili, a longtime Iranian American activist who was imprisoned following the 1979 revolution, said he is impressed by the way the ongoing protests have transcended divisions within the Iranian community and its diaspora. “This uprising is secular, it’s not directed by any religion or by any ideology,” he said.
But some Kurdish American youth say they feel left out of the discourse surrounding Amini’s death.
Amini was Kurdish and lived in Kurdistan province in northwestern Iran, where its long-marginalized Kurdish communities are centered. Kurds have communities in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. They face discrimination across the region.
Iranian Kurds have long sought an autonomous region of their own within Iran, who frequently uses force to suppress Kurdish nationalism and protests. During this autumn’s ongoing uprising, Iran twice struck bases of Kurdish parties in exile across the border in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. Iraqi Kurdistan was a key ally in the U.S. fight against the Islamic State, although the U.S. government has not officially supported the formation of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan.
Mazi Mustafa, 17, a Kurdish American who lives in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., said she feels Kurdish identity has been “over-washed” by the focus on Iranian identity at large by the media and activists alike.
“What we face is different from just ‘Iranian,’ the term,” Mustafa said. “So I think as youth, we should just make sure we’re educating people on who we are and what we’re fighting for and our history.”
Mustafa flew Kurdistan’s flag at the downtown Los Angeles protest on Oct. 1 that drew thousands of people, she said, adding that there was a mix of Iranian and Kurdish flags at the event.
Ameri also attended that protest, in addition to organizing a Tuesday event at the all-girls’ Marlborough School in central L.A. on behalf of the Iranian American Women Foundation, a national women’s empowerment group founded in Orange County.
“These [Iranian women] are the most fearless, brave women I’ve ever seen,” she said. “And for us to act cowardly in response and not speak out … is just something that doesn’t sit well with me.”
Source » washingtonpost