Women(asterisk) Life Freedom Collective: The Iran Women’s March in Washington D.C., Revealed by the Berliner Protests and Sung by Masked Iranians
In Berlin, a crowd estimated by German police at several tens of thousands turned out to show solidarity for the women and activists leading the movement for the past few weeks in Iran. The protests in Germany’s capital, organized by the Woman(asterisk) Life Freedom Collective, began at the Victory Column in Berlin’s Tiergarten park and continued as a march through central Berlin.
Thousands of people wearing green, white and red, the colors of the Tehran flag, shouted in unison on the National Mall. “Be scared. Be scared. We are one in this,” demonstrators yelled, before marching to the White House. “Say her name!” “Muhsa!”
The demonstrations, put together by grassroots organizers from around the United States, drew Iranians from across the Washington D.C. area, with some traveling down from Toronto to join the crowd.
Shooka Scharm, an attorney who was born in the U.S. after her parents fled the Iranian revolution, was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” in English and Farsi. In Iran “women are like a second-class citizen and they are sick of it,” Scharm said.
Samin Aayanifard, who left Iran for the US three years ago, said that the movement in Iran was the same issues as in the US and around the globe. Aayanifard said women’s bodies are under control after 50 years of being forced to wear a hijab. She referred to rollbacks of abortion laws in the United States. “It’s about control over women’s bodies.”
Iran’s security forces have killed over 200 people in dispersals with live bullets and tear gas according to rights groups.
The Biden administration has said it condemns the brutality and repression against the citizens of Iran and that it will look for ways to impose more sanctions against the Iranian government if the violence continues.
The protesters in D.C. broke into song, singing traditional Persian music after the 1979 revolution brought religious fundamentalists to power in Iran. The unofficial anthem of the Iran protests is “Baraye,” meaning because of, which they sang in unison. The artist of that song, Shervin Hajipour, was arrested shortly after posting the song to his Instagram in late September. It accrued more than 40 million views.
It is important that we are in the Netherlands to be seen as the voice of the people of Iran who are dying on the streets. “And this is not a protest anymore, this is a revolution, in Iran. The people of the world need to see it.
First chanted by mourners at Amini’s burial in her hometown of Saqez, the slogan quickly spread from the country’s Kurdish cities to the capital, Tehran. It took on new life in its Farsi translation — “Zan, zendegi, azadi” — and the message continues to reverberate across solidarity protests from Berlin to New York. Even fashion brands like Balenciaga and Gucci have posted the slogan to their Instagram feeds.
There are many translations of the words “jin, jitan, azadi” and they unify Iranians across different ethnic lines. They signify the movement for women’s bodily autonomy and a protest against 43 years of oppression by the Iranian regime.
Some Iranians and the media have neglected the Kurdish background of Amini herself and the slogan that has been used during the protests related to her death, Kurdish activists say.
Every March 8th the Kurdish women’s movement has different campaigns that have been announced and declared to the world, based on the philosophy of freedom called jin, jyan, azadi.
Five years ago, Kurdish female guerrilla fighters with the YPJ militia chanted the slogan during the Kurdish-led Rojava revolution in northern Syria that began in 2012.
The Kurdish feminist school of thought was advocated by Ocalan. The Kurdish women’s movement became part of the broader Kurdish Freedom movement due to that.
Iranian Kurds and Amini’s death: Why Has the State-Sanctioned First Name been Used? — An Iranian-American Kurdish Writer and Filmmaker
That’s also been the case in international coverage of Amini’s death, they contend, in which Mahsa — Amini’s Iranian state-sanctioned first name — is used. In interviews, Amini’s parents have used both her Iranian and Kurdish names.
“I felt like she died twice because no one really was mentioning her Kurdish name or her Kurdish background, which is so relevant,” says Beri Shalmashi, an Amsterdam-based Iranian Kurdish writer and filmmaker.
News reports claim that the Iranian government has blamed Kurds for the current unrest in Iran, and that it has attacked Kurdish cities. The lived experiences of Kurds in the country are ignored by some Persian nationalists.