Juno News - Is a revolution on the horizon in Iran？

00:00:00.000 hello everybody welcome back to the show i hope you're all doing well wherever you are

00:00:22.320 thank you once again for making the time to tune in um today's show deals with an extremely

00:00:28.440 important topic it's about the ongoing protests in iran on september 16th a young woman called masa

00:00:35.080 amini she was only 22 years old from kurdistan died in iran after spending three days in a coma

00:00:43.960 amini was visiting relatives in iran and was detained outside a metro station in tehran

00:00:49.480 a few days earlier by iran's morality police they accused her of breaking the law which requires

00:00:56.760 women in iran to cover their hair with the headscarf and their arms and legs with loose clothing 1.00

00:01:05.240 it's widely believed that she was beaten by the police her death sparked the first big

00:01:11.560 show of opposition on iran's streets since authorities crushed fuel price protests in 2019

00:01:18.280 where 1500 people were killed the protests have spread all across iran and around the

00:01:24.680 world including right here in canada um in canada more recently on the weekend a large protest uh

00:01:32.520 took to the streets uh just outside of toronto uh in richmond uh where apparently 50 000 people

00:01:39.400 showed up to protest the protests in iran however have become increasingly violent since they began

00:01:46.280 women have been leading the protests they've been at the forefront of these protests in iran with women

00:01:51.640 removing uh their headscarves uh and setting fire to the hijab which is the religious head covering for 0.99

00:01:59.720 muslim women videos have also now emerged which show the police uh beating protesters mostly women

00:02:07.400 with batons and spring tear gas and firing on the protesting crowd iran iran's security forces have

00:02:15.880 cracked down on protesters and those who support them have left about 83 people dead according to the

00:02:23.880 norway-based iran human rights organization for the first time since 1979 1979 iranian revolution the

00:02:33.240 the theocratic islamist regime which suppresses the country's women could actually be in jeopardy of

00:02:39.160 falling based on weeks of ongoing street protests with people coming out on the streets and risking

00:02:44.840 everything including their lives given the significance of these protests it's received

00:02:50.360 relatively little coverage in the western media for example the 50 000 people who showed up to

00:02:56.120 protests in canada i believe was not even front page news here in canada and you can imagine how

00:03:03.080 difficult it is to get 50 000 people to protest in canada it's also been ignored uh largely ignored by

00:03:10.840 politicians and by the so-called progressive left which you would think cares about women's uh issues

00:03:17.800 and women's rights but apparently not so in this case my guest today is noted iranian canadian lawyer

00:03:24.760 and human rights activist kaveh sharoos who lives in toronto he's a well-known critic of the communist

00:03:31.000 regime in tehran and it's my great pleasure to welcome him to the show to talk about what is happening

00:03:38.040 in iran everybody please welcome kaveh sharoos to the show um kaveh it's great to have you here

00:03:44.440 could you explain to our listeners and our viewers the background to the current crisis in iran

00:03:51.160 as i understand it a young kurdish woman uh was arrested by the morality police for a slight deviation

00:03:58.040 from the headscarf rule and then she died in their custody uh it appears that since her death

00:04:04.680 um it has galvanized galvanized the iranian people uh in an extraordinary way could you cast some light

00:04:11.400 on what is going on in iran uh at the moment sure happy to and first of all thank you so much uh for

00:04:17.560 the invitation it's really good to be with you um so i i think the the case of massa amini which you

00:04:24.840 mentioned um is you know one we should remember it's really one crime among thousands and thousands of

00:04:32.840 crimes that the iranian regime has committed but this one really you know as the expression goes

00:04:37.640 this is the the one that broke the camel's back um so the the facts around that case were you know

00:04:43.560 here's a young woman 22 years old non-political has no sort of effort it'd be you know makes no effort

00:04:49.080 at being an opposition figure nothing of that sort she's just living her life um she is from kurdistan

00:04:53.480 she comes to chehran to visit her brother um and there she has an interaction with gasht airshad which

00:05:00.440 is which actually translates literally as the guidance patrol but you know in english we call

00:05:04.760 them the morality police um this interaction is very well known to anyone that lives in iran especially

00:05:12.360 iranian women they have to deal with this humiliation regularly um where you know some thug basically 1.00

00:05:18.200 comes up to you and says to fix your hair or to you know you know fix your shirt or not even sure

00:05:24.280 because if you're a woman in iran you know you have to wear something over your clothing but basically

00:05:28.520 they tell you to just like you know uh make yourself less visible essentially um in this case

00:05:34.920 they detained this young woman um they beat her to the point where by the time she was taken to

00:05:42.120 um a clinic she was brain dead and three years three days later she was actually declared dead

00:05:48.520 um and this set off protests initially um you know the protests were focused on the hijab and kind

00:05:55.160 of what happened to this woman but very very quickly um it became frankly a revolution against

00:06:01.640 the regime and all the slogans are basically death to the dictator death to the islamic republic there 1.00

00:06:06.200 was just you know people are tearing down the the pictures of the supreme leader and so on so there's

00:06:10.680 just no confusion about what it is that the protesters want it's very clear that they want a fundamental

00:06:15.960 change in regime as a result right so um so cave i mean we'll get more into what's going on in

00:06:23.000 iran in a little bit but uh um just uh let i just want to talk about you for for for a second you

00:06:30.600 recently helped organize a large protest just outside of toronto against the iranian regime

00:06:36.920 i believe some 10 000 people showed up to protest some people i've read some estimates putting that at

00:06:43.160 50 000 that's that's the actual police estimate 50 000. oh okay well that's interesting so uh can you

00:06:49.880 tell me a little bit about yourself and how did you come to be a human rights activist and a

00:06:55.000 prominent critic of the communist regime sure um so i was born in iran and i lived in iran until i was

00:07:01.320 10 years old this was right after the revolution so this was really the reign of terror that i got to see

00:07:06.120 up close and feel my family i would not say we were you know an incredibly politically active family but

00:07:13.640 but you know people had been politically active um and several members of my family as a result

00:07:18.520 had ended up in iran's prisons both before the revolution and after the revolution um the ones

00:07:23.480 unfortunately that went into the prison after the revolution didn't really live to tell about it

00:07:28.280 the closest person to me uh that suffered that fate was my uncle um he had been arrested at the age of

00:07:35.560 19 i want to say possibly 20 right after the revolution for selling newspapers against the government

00:07:41.720 and he was given a five-minute trial um he was sentenced then to 10 years in prison he was brutally

00:07:48.840 tortured um and so i remember as a child you know being taken by my grandmother and my mother

00:07:53.640 to visit him so i i sort of when we talk about these horrible prisons in iran i've actually seen

00:07:58.040 them up close um and in 1988 after having served eight years of that 10-year sentence he was brought

00:08:06.040 before what's called what was called a death commission um so basically every political

00:08:10.200 prisoner in iran was retried given like a five minute trial not even five minutes probably two

00:08:14.840 minute trial um and based on one or two questions most of them were sent to hang to this day we don't

00:08:21.560 know exactly how my uncle was killed we don't know where he's buried we were not allowed to hold a

00:08:27.480 funeral for him um and so that obviously you know stays with me if you talk to a lot of human rights

00:08:33.560 activists oftentimes they have this sort of central tragedy in their lives and this has been the

00:08:36.920 central tragedy in mind my family then moved to canada a few years later and i grew up in in

00:08:42.280 toronto i went to law school in the us um but all along the story weighed on me and when i was in

00:08:48.840 law school i decided to write a big paper on these killings because no one had really done that

00:08:55.080 and that set me off on a path to human rights activism i when i when i wrote that paper and i

00:08:59.800 published it i knew that i couldn't go back and visit my family in iran anymore but that was the

00:09:04.520 that was the cost that i had to pay and i'm you know i've been paying it for 20 years i haven't been

00:09:08.360 back to see my family in 20 years but uh finally you know the the human rights work that we've been

00:09:13.400 doing is is paying off and uh we're seeing you know movement in the streets yeah and what what were

00:09:18.680 the protests like uh this past weekend in toronto um uh did a politician show up uh um in solidarity

00:09:27.880 who did you reach out to i read somewhere that you had actually reached out to the prime minister

00:09:33.240 and the foreign affairs minister but i believe they didn't even acknowledge the invite uh could you

00:09:39.640 yeah that's that's correct and i mean i don't want to turn this into a partisan sort of bashing of one

00:09:43.880 party or another but i will give you the facts the facts are as follows you know we planned in a very

00:09:48.440 short span of time i mean this these protests have not been going on that long um a protest on saturday

00:09:53.320 october the first um and we invited and we were anticipating 10 000 people to show up 50 000 ended

00:10:01.160 up showing up which was incredible we invited a number of speakers um so for example we invited

00:10:07.160 the president of the ukrainian canadian congress and she came we wanted that expression of solidarity

00:10:12.360 we invited people from civil society but also we invited politicians from all levels of government at

00:10:17.240 the federal level um we invited um the leader of every party and in the case of the liberals not just

00:10:22.680 the prime minister but also the foreign minister um jagmeet singh um said uh or his staff said that

00:10:29.000 he couldn't make it unfortunately he was out in vancouver to his credit he went to a rally in

00:10:32.840 vancouver uh pierre polyev um you know we're grateful to him he changed his weekend plans around

00:10:38.920 and he came to toronto and he gave a speech um the prime minister and minister jolly didn't

00:10:45.560 acknowledge um our email and they didn't come uh there were you know liberal members of parliament

00:10:50.840 there one from the iranian canadian community ali astasi gave a terrific speech but uh it was i'm

00:10:56.840 going to be frank it was disappointing um not to hear back from you know the highest ranking members

00:11:01.480 of government yeah i you know i've actually been struck by the fact and i don't know if you share

00:11:06.200 this uh view but uh that you know many uh politicians in the west uh notably here in canada

00:11:12.520 i found that their response to what's been happening in iran which is pretty significant has been

00:11:17.960 rather tepid um and and i would also say that the same could be said about the progressive left

00:11:24.760 you know which at the drop of a hat will criticize israel and other countries but uh you know are not

00:11:31.160 really taking note on what is going on in iran um how do we understand this do you feel like there's a

00:11:37.160 double standard at work like where are the trending i stand with the iranians hashtags yeah um you know

00:11:43.800 i i've been so busy in terms of planning protests and you know writing op heads and so on i haven't

00:11:48.600 had a ton of time to look at kind of what famous um left-wing figures have been saying about this

00:11:53.640 protest so i can't speak and tell they haven't really been saying much maybe maybe they haven't

00:11:58.200 yeah yeah you know i'll take your word for that um if if they have not um then that's entirely

00:12:03.320 consistent with past practice and if and if they have been saying it then you know bless them but

00:12:07.640 that's not what they've done in the past um regrettably much of the progressive left in

00:12:12.840 the last i don't know few decades has come to view the world solely through the lens of you know

00:12:18.120 anti-imperialism and what that means essentially is that they're willing to hold their fire i don't

00:12:24.040 want to say they want to ally themselves with but they certainly will not outwardly criticize uh regimes

00:12:30.120 that um are in conflict with the united states or israel and that's why you find these weird

00:12:36.920 coalitions of left-wingers for example sometimes even praising the islamic republic of iran or

00:12:42.120 talking about russia in positive ways um it's it's very bizarre yeah um you know this is a phenomena

00:12:47.720 that happens i have to admit also on the far right but it's been much more prominent um on the left

00:12:53.000 yeah um and yeah i mean that's been the issue it's you know iranian people iranian women especially 1.00

00:12:59.400 for a long time have been saying the way we are being treated is really apartheid it's gender apartheid

00:13:05.560 women under the iranian law are considered half of men literally um they are horrendously treated 1.00

00:13:12.760 subjected to awful violence the kinds of things that any western progressive would be horrified

00:13:18.600 by and would never want to you know a situation they would never want to actually live under

00:13:22.200 themselves but when people come you know you know an activist for example like messi alinejad who

00:13:27.880 you know hopefully your readers know she's really a prominent iranian activist who speaks out

00:13:31.720 for women's rights you know they accuse her of being an islamophobe all the time because she's 1.00

00:13:36.680 saying look what is being done in the name of islam to women in iran that has been the position

00:13:41.560 of the left regrettably this has seeped into a lot of our institutions our you know our prime minister's

00:13:47.640 office for example i suspect i mean i can't say this for sure but i suspect a lot of this thinking has

00:13:53.320 clouded their judgment about what sorts of uh positions they ought to be taking with respect to

00:13:58.360 theocracies like iran's yeah well i you know i feel like the our present government i feel that

00:14:05.560 they haven't really done much to challenge the communist uh uh the the regime in iran um more

00:14:13.080 recently the trudeau government issued a boilerplate uh statement about being gravely concerned about

00:14:19.080 what's going on in iran and that the parliament building would be lit up with colors of the iranian flag

00:14:26.040 uh why do you think that uh canada has been so soft on ira on on iran um um to me it doesn't seem

00:14:34.840 plausible because of economic considerations because iran i think is simply not that important

00:14:39.560 economically to canada uh nor is there a huge diaspora in canada that supports the regime to

00:14:45.880 to whom they're playing so how do we understand canada's weak response i mean do you actually agree

00:14:51.240 that canada's response has been weak and tepid yeah so first i i do agree that canada's response

00:14:56.360 has been weak and tepid but let's i want to make sure that we get the facts right um so aside from

00:15:01.800 that statement which you know for the first few days all the trudeau government did position statements

00:15:06.040 the last couple of days they have announced some uh important sanctions and i you know we should

00:15:10.520 acknowledge that um against but the sanctions in my view don't go far enough they don't really meet the

00:15:15.560 demands of the activists what we want is for example the irgc the revolutionary guards which

00:15:21.480 are so horrendous it's such a horrendous institution we want them listed as a as a terror organization

00:15:26.120 for a lot of what they've done including shooting down a plane that had a lot of canadians on board

00:15:30.040 right um but so they haven't done that but they have taken some stuff so let's let's give them credit

00:15:34.440 for that but overall i would say their response has been quite tepid um unsatisfactory

00:15:40.120 what is the reason well i think several things one i mean you say iran is not important enough

00:15:45.640 economically but i would say there are probably business interests in canada that are interested

00:15:50.920 in entering um the iran market and so they have pushed kind of behind the scenes to make sure that

00:15:56.040 we normalize relations with iran um unsuccessfully so far but i think that's part of it um you are again

00:16:02.360 correct i think you know the the diaspora community here as we saw 50 000 people came out in richmond hill

00:16:07.960 um is very much against the regime but there are pockets and this is something that i spend a lot

00:16:13.560 of time uh writing about on social media is what i call the iran lobby there are people who have um

00:16:20.120 by virtue of family connections uh business connections with iran ideological beliefs uh they

00:16:26.040 they want to preserve the islamic republic in one form or another and their numbers have increased in

00:16:31.800 recent years part of that is because our immigration system is set up in such a way that wealthier

00:16:36.760 investors get to come in and wealthier investors often in the case of iran are people that have

00:16:41.800 ties to the region but they have come into the country and i don't know how they've managed to do 0.82

00:16:46.760 this but they've got the ear of some of our policy makers and the image that they were they

00:16:52.840 have been portraying to our politicians is one where it says well you know iran's regime is a

00:16:57.720 regime you can do business with sure the people are unhappy but people are unhappy everywhere and

00:17:02.280 you know iran has its troubles but they can work it out one of the reasons i'm so proud that we did

00:17:07.160 this huge rally in which we know was to dispel that myth and tell the politicians look it's really

00:17:12.440 hard to get 50 000 people on the street think about how angry people must be so the advice that you've

00:17:18.040 been getting pmo the advice you've been getting foreign minister it's bad advice the real advice is

00:17:23.000 what activists have been trying to tell you which is that this is an awful apartheid regime and you

00:17:27.160 should do everything in your power to get rid of it it's good politics and also it's the moral thing

00:17:31.400 to do yeah i mean it is quite extraordinary that 50 000 people showed up and has this even been front

00:17:37.560 page news and it has not that's one of the one of the things that shocks me is you know we've we've

00:17:42.920 had coverage i would say every major network has talked about this case but i can't think of the last

00:17:48.120 time where we had you know 50 000 yeah i don't i don't even think the freedom protests had that many

00:17:53.640 people and those were i defer to you i mean you're the expert on that but i i follow the news and i

00:17:58.040 don't see a lot of 50 000 protests yeah no no i think this would be front page news but it was

00:18:03.880 it wasn't covered that way no it wasn't yeah i mean we can we can talk about the reasons for that

00:18:08.360 but i i suspect because a it cuts against kind of the established narrative in our media that iran is

00:18:13.640 kind of bad but maybe we can do business with them as i was just saying um and partly i think they

00:18:17.800 were just caught by surprise they for years they had not understood this anger that was building

00:18:22.520 yeah well you know so uh kavi there have there have been previous street protests in iran since

00:18:28.440 komeini came to power in 1979 uh how is this going to be different is this time going to be different

00:18:34.440 is there a reason to believe that this revolution might succeed where others have failed yeah uh so it

00:18:41.480 is absolutely different i 100 believe that in my heart of hearts i believe that it will be successful

00:18:47.160 this will overthrow the regime it might not happen immediately but it will happen in the longer term

00:18:51.320 um but we should be under no illusions iran's regime is an unbelievably brutal regime and it will

00:19:00.040 not hesitate to shed as much blood as is necessary to stay in power so there are some dark days ahead

00:19:05.560 i have to warn everybody um the reason i think this this set of protests is different is that in the

00:19:12.280 last you know 15 20 years there have been a number of mass protests starting in 2009 i mean there were

00:19:17.160 there were some earlier but 2009 is kind of a watershed um but that protest focused a lot on

00:19:22.200 you know a stolen election it sort of accepted the premise that the islamic republic should exist but

00:19:28.840 it wanted to improve it um in 2019 again there were mass protests this time not about elections this

00:19:35.480 this one was about um you know it was it was sparked by economic the economy right yeah that was the spark

00:19:42.920 and you know the the slogans were much more radical um the regime crushed it pretty quickly um but this

00:19:50.840 time what's incredible is that first of all from basically day one the slogan has been death to the

00:19:56.840 islamic republic death to the dictate right so there is there's just no equivocation on what the demand is

00:20:03.160 and secondly you watch these videos of what's happening and people either because they're they

00:20:08.600 simply have nothing left to lose or they've just suffered so much they're just unafraid i mean the

00:20:13.640 security forces come out and as soon as you know one security agent gets separated from the pack people

00:20:19.880 just jump on him and destroy him um and it's just that anger and rage that's coming out and the regime

00:20:26.440 tries to call these protests so for example a few days ago they attacked a university imagine you know 0.86

00:20:31.320 york university or university of ottawa where the students are trapped on campus and goons show up and

00:20:36.680 start shooting live bullets to arrest people this happened um in an attempt to stop university

00:20:41.960 students from protesting and what happened the next day far more university students were out in the

00:20:46.920 street protesting and all these other campuses were shut down so you know the usual tactics that the

00:20:51.880 regime uses to shut protests down are simply not working anymore which is why i remain really hopeful

00:20:57.400 that with international pressure and domestic pressure uh this regime is like it just this regime just

00:21:02.680 can't go back to you know business as usual it just can't afterwards yeah um and if the if the current

00:21:09.000 revolution succeeds and the regime is toppled uh the big question is um what is it going to replace

00:21:16.360 what what's going to replace it will it be something better or something worse it's hard to imagine it

00:21:22.040 will be worse but there are you know let me let me first lay out the worst case scenarios right the

00:21:25.880 worst case scenario would be um you know the clerics are gone but the irgc for example ends up taking over

00:21:31.960 and becoming less a clerical establishment but it becomes a military that's possible the other

00:21:37.800 possibility and this is the one that the regime itself keeps publicizing if you get rid of us you

00:21:43.160 know uh iran will turn into syria some kind of civil war so these are the very dark predictions i frankly

00:21:48.600 don't think that's what's going to happen i i have much more positive views of what's what's to come

00:21:53.400 iran has a for all the problems it has it has a pretty strong civil society that has spent years

00:21:58.520 thinking about what democracy is and democracy would look like there's a large diaspora population

00:22:03.000 that has lived with democracy now in the west for many years so we have some experience with it

00:22:08.200 and these protests are sort of leaderless at the moment but there are figures that have popularity

00:22:14.920 and they have democratic visions of what iran should look like so that gives me hope as well

00:22:20.680 i think my hope is that these protests eventually get to a point where the regime has to concede and

00:22:26.440 has to hold at the very least a referendum um do you want the islamic republic or do you want some

00:22:31.320 other form of government and i have no doubt that you know another form of government be it uh you

00:22:35.880 know a full republic or a constitutional monarchy one of those will end up prevailing over the

00:22:40.040 islamic republic that's my hope okay um many expat uh iranians for example who left at the time of the

00:22:48.680 revolution um look back at the time of the shah as the golden age and uh he was seen as a great

00:22:56.520 secularizer um although the regime uh had its share of corruption and so on um so what could we expect

00:23:05.640 of an iran post the komeni area will i mean will they turn to liberal democracy or um i mean i think

00:23:12.760 it's a version of the earlier question but you know or is it going to be something worse than the present

00:23:17.560 regime yeah that's that's a good question and it is you know a version of the earlier question you

00:23:22.360 asked my my guess is given first of all i i do not foresee religion continuing in government any

00:23:28.840 meaningful sense having had religion forced down their throat for 40 years iranians are incredibly 0.98

00:23:33.320 secular actually interesting so kaveh on that how uh religious how how deeply entrenched are these uh

00:23:41.000 are is is are these strong religious identities in iran you you don't think that uh there's a section a

00:23:47.000 strong section of the population that uh feel strongly about this i think there is a section

00:23:51.720 of the population that is religious certainly just as you know before the revolution there was a

00:23:55.560 segment of the population that was right of course i think the experience of mixing religion with

00:24:00.520 politics is is we've run that experiment and we know that this experiment is a disaster and i think

00:24:06.760 most decent religious people in iran also see that they may want to practice private faith and that's

00:24:12.360 fine and i i hope that a future um democratic government in iran you know allows people to

00:24:17.720 to be muslims if they want to be even outwardly so if they want to be but uh that that should have 1.00

00:24:23.480 no role in in government um there is obviously a segment of the population who views their religiosity

00:24:29.560 through the lens of the regime itself because they potentially by by virtue of their financial

00:24:35.160 connections or whatever they want to preserve this form of religiosity but i think they're a very

00:24:38.840 small segment of the population um to go back to your earlier question um i think you know a future

00:24:46.520 iran um will be liberal and democratic in outlook precisely for the reasons that i mentioned earlier

00:24:53.080 you know we now have spent a lot of time thinking about why um the 79 revolution went wrong um we've spent

00:25:01.400 a lot of time thinking about what makes a democracy work we have a lot of people millions of people that

00:25:06.920 have lived in the west with an experience with democracy and we also now have this uprising of

00:25:11.880 women who have had their rights taken away so i think any future government will have to be 1.00

00:25:16.440 responsive to women um so a future government will be one that respects the rights of women and

00:25:21.000 typically a regime or a structure of government that respects women's rights tends to be democratic 1.00

00:25:27.080 in the golden element it almost by definition has to be and so i i am very hopeful about kind of what's

00:25:32.360 possible well um so yeah so kaveh i mean on that note i'm gonna have to leave it there but i do hope

00:25:40.760 that uh you know the protests succeed uh and i do hope that we in the west take note of what is happening

00:25:47.400 in iran and give them all the support that they that they need uh i do take hope that you know the soviet

00:25:53.640 union at one point was seemed unshakable uh and it it will need to eventually shatter so i uh

00:26:00.760 eventually to fall so i hope that uh that there's a similar outcome in iran and i really do appreciate

00:26:06.520 your perspective and thank you for uh joining me on the show to talk about iran thank you i really i

00:26:11.880 really appreciate the invitation i wrote a piece uh the other day where i said revolution sometimes

00:26:15.960 seem impossible until the moment they become inevitable and i think we've hit that moment now so

00:26:20.280 thank you for the chance to talk about it perfect thank you kaveh thank you so much

Juno News - October 07, 2022

Is a revolution on the horizon in Iran？

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