How Iran’s protests transformed into a national uprising

CNN – Oct 13th 2022

By Jomana Karadsheh, Tamara Qiblawi and Adam Pourahmadi,

Nearly a month after the start of nationwide protests, parts of Iran now bear the hallmarks of battle zones, with flares lighting up skies, gunfire ringing out and bloody scenes recorded in video footage.

“I am recording this video about the situation in Sanandaj,” said one demonstrator, his face covered with a black scarf and dark glasses, in a message to CNN from the Kurdish-majority city in western Iran, where some of the most dramatic images have emerged from the protests, despite a near total internet shutdown in the area.

“Last night, the security forces were firing in the direction of houses. They were using military-grade bullets,” he said. “Until now, I hadn’t heard such bullets. People were really afraid.”

Video apparently shot from rooftops showed what appeared to be clashes between young protesters and heavily armed security forces. Bullets and flares crossed the night sky and a cloud of dust and smoke covered the city blocks.

At street level, other videos showed protesters throwing rocks at police, with the officers sometimes traveling in a procession of motorcycles, who appeared to be shooting at the crowd.

Large numbers of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have been participating in the crackdown in addition to local police, say activists in Sanandaj, who accuse authorities of lashing back indiscriminately. According to Oslo-based Kurdish rights group Hengaw, a 7-year-old boy died in his mother’s arms on Sunday after security forces fired into a crowd of protesters.

While it is impossible to independently verify a death toll from such clashes, gruesome images circulating online, and eyewitness testimony collected by CNN as well as rights groups, point to the bloodshed. Video showed a driver in the city lying dead with a large gunshot wound in his face – activists said he was honking his horn in solidarity with protesters.

“In Sanandaj, they shoot the people honking their horns with bullets. And they shoot young and old alike,” said another protester in a video message to CNN. “The injured don’t go to hospitals because if they go there plain-clothes police will arrest them.

“We are protesting for freedom in Iran. For the prisoners and the condemned, for the people of Iran calling for the regime to go. Everyone wants this regime to go.”

More than ‘a protest for reform’

Despite the government’s repeated claims of having restored calm, the scenes are being replicated throughout the country to varying degrees, with the Kurdish-majority west of the country appearing to bear the brunt of the crackdown.

With remarkable defiance, Iranian people keep pouring into thoroughfares across the country. The protests were first ignited by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini (also known as Zhina), who died nearly one month ago after being detained by the country’s morality police, but demonstrators have since coalesced around a range of grievances with the regime.

Increasingly, activists and experts are characterizing the protests as a national uprising and one of the biggest challenges to the Iranian regime since its founding.

“This is not a protest for reform,” Roham Alvandi, an associate professor of History at the London School of Economics, told CNN. “This is an uprising demanding the end of the Islamic Republic. And that is something completely different to what we’ve seen before.”