[Theme Music Starts]

KARA:

From Schwartz Media I’m Kara Jensen-Mackinnon, this is 7am.

The notorious Evin prison in Iran – which holds the Islamic Republic’s political prisoners – was on fire over the weekend.

Protests that began over the death of a woman in police custody have now morphed into a broad anti-government movement… the most significant in years.

This time, protestors are being more daring than ever before – calling for the death of Iran’s supreme leader and flaunting Iran’s strict morality laws in the streets.

Today, scholar of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and one-time detainee at Evin Prison, Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, on just how far the Iranian protestors are willing to go.

It’s Tuesday, October 18.

[Theme Music Ends]

KARA:

Kylie, a few weeks ago, an Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini was murdered at the hands of the so-called morality police in Iran. Can you tell me what happened?

KYLIE:

So, Mahsa Amini, she was a 22 year old Kurdish woman who was visiting Tehran with her family and had walked out of one of the metro stations with her brother and was accosted by the morality police.

And, we have two versions of events. One is the version of events given by the Iranian regime, which is obviously suspect. And that is that Mahsa was arrested due to actually we've later learnt due to wearing tight trousers. But at the time it was reported that it was due to her hijab and she was arrested and taken for a one hour re-education session, which is sort of what they do. They bring you into some sort of detention facility or some sort of morality police facility and instruct you on how to correctly dress according to the dress code of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And then they're supposed to let you go. But Mahsa never emerged from that facility. And according to her family, she was essentially beaten to death. She received a blow to her head from a blunt object, and that caused some sort of brain haemorrhage. She ended up in hospital and there are photos of her in the intensive care unit. She was essentially brain dead, but being kept alive on life support and then passed away a couple of days later.

We don't really know that much about her life. She seems to have led a regular life for a young woman in the Kurdish provinces. She had recently enrolled in university. She was described as non-political and, you know, a very kind, gentle person who tried to stay away from such matters. So it sounds like she's just an average, everyday person. And I think that's why so many Iranians can see themselves in her and can sympathise with her experience. Because it could have happened to any one of them too.

KARA:

And in the weeks since this terrible incident, thousands of women have taken to the streets to protest. Can you talk us through the situation unfolding in Iran right now? What kind of scenes are we seeing?

KYLIE:

We're seeing utterly incredible scenes.

Archival tape -- Protestors:

“We want freedom for women, we want this regime to get out of the country. They are terrorists.”

KYLIE:

Across the entire country, in every province of Iran, amongst every ethnic group and religious group in Iran.

Women and men, young school children, even primary school age children participating in sit ins and. And protests and demonstrations of dissent.

Archival tape - [Al-Zahra students chanting]

KYLIE:

We're seeing amazing videos of just brazen disregard for the security forces by protesters.

Archival tape - [Protestors]

KYLIE:

People who are entirely unarmed, just walking up to armed security forces and doing stuff in front of them without fear of what could happen to them.

Archival tape - [Police attaching protestors]

KYLIE:

We're seeing symbols of the regime being torched, being burnt, being targeted out in the open, even in front of security forces.

Archival tape - [Protestors]

KYLIE:

We've seen crackdowns. We've seen the Internet cut off to vast swathes of the country for days on end.

Archival tape -- NBC Reporter:

“Iran’s military now issuing a chilling warning as the demonstrations escalate. The army calling the protestors enemies and threatening to confront them.”

KYLIE:

And we've seen extraordinary levels of violence by the security forces, including open fire, shooting people in the streets.

Archival tape -- France 24 Reporter:

“Dozens of demonstrators are reported to have been killed, the deaths drawing international condemnation.”

KYLIE:

Huge waves of arrests, but also incredible defiance.

The brazenness of it and the complete lack of fear of these brave people on the streets is what's most struck me.

So this movement started off calling for justice for Mahsa Amini and very, very quickly, within the first 24 hours, transformed into an anti-regime movement. And the people who are protesting want this regime to go. It is not a movement just calling for women's rights or just calling for the morality police to be disbanded or something like that. It tapped into this vast undercurrent of dissent and unrest in Iran that's been bubbling away for over a decade at this point where people are just fed up with the Islamic Republic regime and they want change.

KARA:

So this started with Mahsa’s murder but has become a catalyst I suppose for something much bigger – what are these grievances that have been building up, and why are people willing to risk taking on the government and the security forces right now?

KYLIE:

I think that one of the main grievances of people in Iran, whether they be protesting or not, whether they be religious or secular, is corruption. And this is financial corruption, but also systemic corruption within the justice system, within the political system.

And the economy in Iran is dreadful. It's shocking right now, and corruption is the main reason for that. People are struggling to survive and struggling to live in this mass poverty in Iran today because of the corruption and mass discrepancy between those regime officials and their families who are benefiting and everybody else who's losing out.
It's very difficult to report on what's actually happening within Iran when this dictatorial regime doesn't allow foreign journalists and tries to restrict the freedom of expression of its people. So us in the West have long had this kind of skewed impression of what Iran is based on, the propaganda that the regime puts out there and footage that the regime allows to be broadcast. …We don't see the regular everyday people and what the everyday person on the street thinks, because everything information is so tightly controlled within the Islamic Republic.

So I think a lot of so-called experts on Iran living in the West were perhaps a little bit surprised by the ferocity of the current uprising, given the narrative around Iran had long been that there is sizable support within the country for the regime. But what we're seeing now is that the vast bulk of the Iranian people do not support the regime and its ideology and they want something different.

KARA:

We’ll be back after this.

[Advertisement]

Archival tape -- Sky News Reporter:

“It was September 2018 and Dr Kylie Moore Gilbert was about to board a plane home to Australia from Iran. Revolutionary guards accused her of being a spy.”

Archival tape -- Nine News Reporter:

“Dr Moore-Gilbert says she was psychologically tortured and kept in solitary confinement for weeks on end.”

Archival tape -- BBC Reporter:

“A British-Australian academic has expressed relief and thanks at her release from 2 years detention in Iran for espionage.”

KARA:

Kylie, we're talking about the protests in Iran that have garnered support all around the world. And you've actually spent time yourself in an Iranian prison. Can you tell me a bit about the kinds of people you met while you were in that prison?

KYLIE:

I met all kinds of people. I was actually in two prisons. The first was a max security facility for political and security prisoners. So that was a very specific type of prisoner. It was normally highly educated, not necessarily politically active, but somebody who had put thought into their ideas on government and society, etc. They used to call it Evin University because of the number of lawyers and doctors and professors and scholars who'd been imprisoned there. So that demographic was quite different to the second prison I was in, which was called Gharchak, and that was a regular criminal prison where the socioeconomic status of most prisoners was very low. The education status was very low. There were a lot of people who hadn't even finished high school. There were functionally illiterate people in that prison…So I was exposed to all kinds of people, and most of them were good people.

Everybody had some horrific story. I won't say that they're all innocent and some of them were certainly guilty of the criminal offences they'd been convicted of committing. But many, many, many of these women came from horrific backgrounds, backgrounds of domestic violence and abuse, of poverty, of living in the streets, of, you know, having to sell drugs, for instance, just to feed their children, being forced into prostitution or being trafficked even, all sorts of horrific stories. And, you know, the criminal justice system in Iran is broken, clearly.

KARA:

So Kylie it sounds like those who are being incarcerated were largely just victims of these draconian laws and the widespread corruption, and clearly it’s becoming untenable. But we have seen unrest in Iran before… I’m thinking of the protests during the Green Movement back in 2009. And for a moment, it really did look like they could change the country. Ultimately they didn’t. What makes these protests any different?

KYLIE:

It is different. And one of the big differences between this and the Green Movement is that the Green Movement was an internal problem within the regime. It started off as such anyway.

Archival tape -- NBC Reporter:

“Supporters of Iran’s pro-reformist candidate have taken to the streets of Tehran to protest the country's presidential election results.”

KYLIE:

The regime's heavily managed, controlled authoritarian elections were manoeuvred or manipulated behind the scenes in favour of a particular candidate. And for that reason, people went out to protest.

Archival tape -- NBC Reporter:

“According to the government, hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cruised to a landslide victory winning more than 60% of the vote. However that’s not sitting well with supporters of Amir Hossein Mousavi who was widely expected to fare much better at the polls.”

KYLIE:

So they're still accepting the rules of the game. They're still accepting the authoritarian regime, structured elections, but they're protesting the outcome of those elections.

What we’re seeing now is a wholesale rejection of the system itself. People don’t believe in any of these managed elections, they don’t want this regime in power any longer.

We've seen basically an escalation in rhetoric and in tactics of the protesters and in their demands.

These mass chants of death to the dictator, down with the Supreme Leader, down with the Islamic Republic.

And they won't accept anything less than the fall of this regime. They want revolution. They want this regime gone.

So…I think it will be very, very hard now to force women back into conservative Islamic attire against their will and, you know, imprison women for that, too. But the repressive apparatus of the state is immense. They haven't unleashed their full potential against the protesters yet. They've started mass crackdowns in some ethnic minority areas like Kurdistan and Baluchestan, but they haven't unleashed the similar level of force in the capital city, Tehran, or in some of the more Persian areas of the country. So I think perhaps if they do launch a vicious, more brutal crackdown to what they already are doing now, it's possible they can force it back into the box momentarily, but certainly not permanently. I think the rubicon has been crossed and paddling all the way back to the situation a decade ago is no longer feasible.

KARA:

And finally, Kylie, the protesters keep chanting the name of Mahsa Amini, whose death sparked these protests for women in Iran. They appear keenly aware that any one of them could suffer the same fate for as long as these so-called morality laws remain in place. So just how much do you think they're willing to sacrifice in the struggle?

KYLIE:

The protesters have made it clear that they're willing to sacrifice their lives. And, you know, some of them have been chanting that. So this is obviously a highly dangerous and risky situation for the regime. And how it responds is also risky, because if it responds with extreme violence and it as it has done on a number of occasions, and actually killed innocent protesters, particularly young women and girls, the deaths of those additional protesters become a new lightning rod for those on the streets and are kind of martyrs to the cause of the protests and fuel them further. So that is the danger. Young women and girls and men and boys, too, have made it clear that they are in this for the long-haul and they won't go back home until this Islamic republic is removed from power. So it's a kind of a zero sum game now between the protesters and the regime, which still holds a monopoly on power and force.

And we've seen hints of some disagreement and breakage within the regime itself and the security apparatus itself, until that starts to break up a little bit more. And the monopoly on force of the current regime is fragmented, it might be difficult for the protesters to readdress that power imbalance, but it is possible it will happen. And we saw it happen in other uprisings in the Middle East prior. So I think it has a long time to run before we see a resolution in any case.

KARA:

Kylie, thank you so much for your time.

KYLIE:

Thanks for having me.

[Theme Music Starts]

KARA:

Also in the news today,

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews says that about 11,000 Victorians could currently be displaced by floods in the state.

That number of people applied for payments from the state government for being displaced, and Andrews said the figure gave a decent idea of how widespread the damage has been.

And

Former prime minister Scott Morrison has been announced as a private speaker for corporate events.

Worldwide Speakers Group, said they now represent Mr Morrison exclusively for international speaking events. The company described Morrison as, quote: “a globalisation mastermind”.

From me, Kara Jensen-Mackinnon, see you soon – Ruby Jones will be back tomorrow.

[Theme Music Ends]