The Denial Rhetoric in the Islamic Republic
The denial rhetoric in the Islamic Republic: What is seen these days on the streets of Iran indicates a major civil protest, larger than those in December 2017, July 2018, and even November 2019. These protests, sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish girl from Saqqez, while in the custody of the morality police, have expanded beyond the issue of mandatory hijab and economic demands. The protests even reached elementary schools, where many books with the first page showing the current or previous leaders of the Islamic Republic were torn by small protesting hands.
Photos of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ruhollah Khomeini are no longer safe in classrooms, being replaced one after another with pictures of Mahsa Amini or slogans like ‘Woman, Life, Freedom.’ Universities have become places of high-level protests rather than higher education.
From sit-ins and boycotting classes to insisting on mixed dining halls, students continue their protests daily despite severe crackdowns and arrests by the Islamic Republic’s security forces. In some cities, especially Kurdish areas, shopkeepers have stopped working, prioritizing a bigger concern over earning a living for their families. The streets of Iran do not find peace even at night.
The Depth of Protests
At times, the chants of ‘Dishonorable, Dishonorable’ from the protesters are heard, and at other times, the sound of gunfire and tear gas. This is a clear image that even if you’re not Iranian but a foreign citizen living miles away in a safe and peaceful country, you can grasp the depth of the protests by seeing them on social media.
These news stories have now garnered significant global support, from politicians and celebrities to human rights activists and ordinary people. For weeks, they have been aware of the popular protests in Iran, each resonating with the protesters in their own way. Iranians abroad have also gone above and beyond.
The October 22nd demonstration in Berlin, Germany’s capital, which reportedly involved over 100,000 participants according to the German police, is an uncommon event in the history of Germany or other European countries. However, the Iranian state TV news at 7:30 PM Tehran time, without showing even a single image of this demonstration, reduced the support of tens of thousands of demonstrators for their compatriots to a protest by some Germans against the fuel crisis. This futile attempt is more indicative of the Islamic Republic’s surprise at the presence and support of Iranian and foreign citizens for the domestic protests.
Just a few days ago, the representative of the Supreme Leader in Khuzestan claimed that the total number of participants in the nationwide protests was 90,000. Before him, Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel, a member of the Expediency Discernment Council and the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, claimed in Mashhad that the protesters numbered 200,000, a figure he said was incomparable to the number of people at the funeral of Qasem Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Since the beginning of the recent protests, many officials and supporters of the Islamic Republic have tried to describe the number of protesters as between 2 to 5 percent of Iran’s total population.
Denial Rhetoric
The denial rhetoric, which the government has long employed, is a policy that the Islamic Republic has consistently used against protesters since the victory of the 1979 revolution in Iran. One of the major examples is the protests following the 2009 presidential election, where protesters claimed fraud and that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s name was announced as the winner at the behest of the Islamic Republic.
In those protests, according to human rights organizations, hundreds were killed by security forces, but state media, at best, reported 72 deaths, claiming many were Basij members killed by protesters or, as the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic put it, assassinated.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of the ninth and tenth governments, in his victory celebration on June 24, referred to the millions of protesters as ‘dust and dirt’ and ‘few in number.’ In December 2017, many people protested against rising prices and economic conditions, taking to the streets in various cities for ten days, chanting slogans against the entirety of the Islamic Republic.
The government once again resorted to widespread suppression of protesters. Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the then-spokesman of the judiciary, claimed on January 14, 2018, that only 25 people were killed in the protests, including two prisoners who committed suicide in Evin Prison. A statistic that, given the severe crackdown on protesters by security forces, seems far from reality.
In July 2018, many Tehran bazaar traders took to the streets protesting the exchange rate, protests that spread to several other cities, including Shahriar, Karaj, Qeshm, Bandar Abbas, and Mashhad. Despite the widespread protest of traders and bazaar merchants, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the then Tehran prosecutor, said the main instigators of the protesters were not from the bazaar.
The Peak of Suppression and Denial in 2019
But the peak of lying and denial of the killing of protesters and Iranian citizens can perhaps be traced back to 2019, in two separate incidents where many Iranians were killed by the Islamic Republic. The first was the 2019 protests, sparked by a tripling of gasoline prices. Protests began at midnight on November 15 with the sudden announcement of gasoline price hikes, and the government, by cutting off the internet, engaged in widespread suppression of protesters. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic called the protests not popular but security-related and the work of enemies.
The first was the 2019 protests, sparked by a tripling of gasoline prices. Protests began at midnight on November 15 with the sudden announcement of gasoline price hikes, and the government, by cutting off the internet, engaged in widespread suppression of protesters. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic called the protests not popular but security-related and the work of enemies. The only statistic provided by the government regarding the November 2019 casualties was announced by Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli in June 2020. The Minister of the Interior in Hassan Rouhani’s government claimed that between 200 and 225 people were killed in the November incidents. However, Reuters reported the number of deaths as over 1,500.
Flight 752 and Three Days of Concealment
The next incident, where the Islamic Republic officials used the most denial and lying, was the downing of Ukraine Flight 752, which was shot down by the IRGC missiles on January 8, 2020.
An event in which 176 people were killed. The reaction of Islamic Republic officials from the outset was to deny involvement in the incident. Ali Abedzadeh, the then head of the Civil Aviation Organization, described the plane’s downing due to a missile strike as scientifically impossible and illogical rumors. Abolfazl Shekarchi, the senior spokesperson for the Islamic Republic’s armed forces, referred to the rumor of a missile hitting the Ukrainian passenger plane as another conspiracy in a psychological war.
The incident, which ultimately, due to the existence of solid evidence, after three days of concealment, forced the IRGC commanders to admit the organization’s role in the plane’s downing. Denial and lying is a policy that is systematically and increasingly used in the Islamic Republic.
This rhetoric is not only used against protesters but also regarding secret nuclear activities and the denial of documented historical events, including the Holocaust. A policy that, after 43 years, its outcome can now be clearly seen in larger and more widespread protests that have put the survival of the Islamic Republic more at risk than ever before.
- What is Hamed Esmaeilion seeking?
- Freedom comes with chains