“Women, life, Liberty”, 40 days of protests in Iran

Since mid-September, images of Iranian students and schoolgirls protesting across Iran have flooded social media.
The unrest started following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, who died in custody on 16 September, after being detained in Tehran by the morality police for allegedly not covering her hair properly.

At least 201 people have been killed since the nationwide protests erupted, among them, 28 children, according to the Tehran-based Association for the Protection of Children. The largest number of deaths occurred in the provinces of Sistan and Baluchistan.

These protests, led by young women, are unusual, but will they make history? We have spoken with Iranian scholars, protesters inside Iran and Iranian activists in the diaspora who have told us how they are experiencing it.

We speak to:

• Hamze Ghalebi, Iranian analyst and former adviser to Reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi who led mass protests in 2009.
• Elnaz Sarbar, an Iranian-American women’s right activist.
• Ramyar Hassani, spokeperson for Hengaw Organization for Human Rights
• Maral and Negin, Iranian protesters based in Yerevan.
• An anonymous student based in Shiraz, Iran.