Hello friends as you know a brand new season of best friends back all right returns next week on October 14th but we have a special report is what I’m calling it today um we felt like today’s topic deserved a fully dedicated piece so with that Nadine why don’t you if you could start off by telling us what is because I think we’ve all heard echoes but but what is happening in Iran and and just can you can you fill us in with the details that we may not know yeah Iran is in its third week of back to back daily protests across the country that are calling for an end of the existing regime and demanding human rights this has been a really um rough very emotionally volatile um three weeks for any Iranian that you’ll talk to um and that’s because people are being murdered in the streets they’re being arrested they’re being abducted from their homes from school they’ve been taken to prison and it’s because people have had enough um I’ll get into like why they have had enough but um just to give you guys a sense of the scale of murder that is happening um last week dozens of people in a city in the south of Iran called sahadan experienced a massacre of around 70 people this is a part of Iran that has a Sunni Muslim population they are minority Iran is a Shia Muslim country but they were massacred after Friday prayers on Sunday this is just a few days ago students and professors from a few universities including shadif University which is the equivalent of like a Harvard Yale MIT but turbocharged they have like more smart people in that University than anywhere I know police have targeted these schools and they’ve trapped students and professors on campus the routes to and from these schools have been blocked and we are seeing video footage of bullets being shot there are reports of students that are being apprehended 20 to 30 people at a time take taken to Evin prison which is the highest security prison in Iran and it’s most notorious for having you know political dissidents in it and I mean it’s just been really scary because every single day we’re waking up we’re you know many hours behind Iran but we’re waking up hoping for something positive and we’re seeing these amazing stories of people that are just going out onto the streets and and fighting and fighting back and they’re not fighting with weapons by the way this is just like people going out onto the street demonstrating demanding with their voices that they want the end of the they want to see the end of the regime they want their human rights but there are also these videos of police literally like covering the heads of these students as they take them away literally abducting them or kidnapping I don’t know what the right word from it is but they’re they’re taking these students to prison and I guess the the question is why what what is what is the reason that all of this started how did all of this start yeah to give you a sense of how this all started so September 16th a few weeks ago a kurdish-iranian woman named Masa amini died in the custody of the Islamic Republic’s morality police okay so morality police is a very strange thing and there’s um I I can link in the show notes to a great Creator who does kind of a overview of their history but in general it’s a branch of the police at house the power to punish people for not obeying the religious code okay and in this case they took her in because she wasn’t wearing her scarf her hijab properly on her head which is I mean the morality polices uh outrageous group of people the way they act as super irrational if you look at pictures of Gina she was actually so modestly dressed and she looked like an ordinary person in Iran okay but she’s taken into custody and she dies in custody and the government claims that she died of pre-existing conditions okay that this 22 year old woman died of a heart attack but photos of Masa were taken at the hospital where she was in a coma and clearly you can see that she suffered multiple a beating that she had head wounds um and she ultimately dies and the reason that we know or that we even have these pictures is because a photographer went into the hospital took these photos and shared them with the world that photographer by the way has now been arrested and also sent sent to prison but when people saw these photos they poured out into the streets because people saw themselves in NASA like I told you she’s the super ordinary young woman and people saw their sister and her they saw their daughter and her they saw themselves in her and she was this ordinary woman who had something extraordinarily terrible done to her and so in the wake uh of that news women and men but women and droves have been going out onto the streets they have been leading these protests they’ve been at the helm of them really they’ve been chanting for masa for human rights and some of the images are just some of the most powerful I’ve ever seen they’re ripping their veils off they’re burning them in an act of defiance they’re cutting their hair and I don’t believe they’re doing that to say Islam is bad they’re doing it because the Islamic Republic has used the scarf has used the veil as a way of controlling woman yeah and they’ve used it as this kind of this physical representation of their power and it’s one of the many ways that they have bastardized religion to control people and so I say that because I think it’s important for people to know that this is not necessarily an is anti-islamic movement yeah it’s a movement against an Islamic regime that has manipulated religion to its benefit and I say that because in the streets you’ll probably see women wearing hijab and women not wearing hijab that are out on these protests you see conservative people and liberals going out in the streets because masa’s kind of massa’s death represents so much that has gone wrong in Iran over the last yeah 40 plus years so it’s it’s it’s simply not about head coverings it’s it’s represented exactly something larger so what what do the people and the streets and and the people coming out against the regime ultimately what is their ask and what what are they fighting for because it’s not just about head coverings yeah yeah I think as a little bit of context since 1979 Iran has been in a Islamic Republic before that it was in a monarchy which was also not a fantastic system I might add but it became a Islamic regime in 1979 and so for 43 years Iranians have been living in a kind of dictatorship that has left the country depleted of its natural resources the smartest people in the country have left the country because there just aren’t these opportunities and they have repressed So Many religious and ethnic minorities and women and this these these protests these demonstrations are really about this freedom from compulsion right this freedom of this bodily Freedom they want sovereignty they want the ability to govern themselves and not be governed by these old ass theocrats who are completely out of touch with the reality of Iran and have been have been that way for a very long time and so I think it’s sovereignty and freedom of compulsion that’s what they’re what what they want and this isn’t the first you know protest that have happened so what what makes these so distinct in comparison with the protests that have happened in the past you’re right there have been there have been a number of protests in Iran’s history many of them powerful but what makes this one distinct from the others in the past are a few things one of them is that women are at the center and at the helm of this movement okay they are the ones leading this movement another one is that gen Z is responsible for so much of what we’re seeing online and what is fueling this movement they are pushing the boundaries they are like the people under 25 who are so in touch with what is possible from the internet and so fed up with what has been imposed on them that they have really been kind of throwing out all of the old rules of of demonstrations and protests and doing it their own [ ] way and they that has been so amazing amazing to see like it’s also super scary because for three weeks now by the time you guys hear this maybe up to four young people are the ones who have been going out on the street risking their lives to just be heard right another really interesting thing is that it is so many women but it’s not just women you’re seeing women and men um hand in hand you’re seeing men supporting women protecting women fighting off the fighting off the policemen and um it’s not just the intellectuals that are out there it’s not just working class it’s all classes that are out there it’s across age groups it’s Rural and and urban in the past some of these demonstrations have been focused in the capital or bigger cities you can see these PL these these um protests happening all over the country and so there’s such Mass support which I think is something that distinguishes it from previous communities I saw a video of these older men they had to be like 65 plus thousands of older men that were from the bazaar they were the like the merchants of a pretty religious City that were protest it was all men they were pushing away the policemen they were like they were speaking out events what happened to Masa and they were saying down with so very I will say very popular Iranian chant and a protest is death to fill in the blank and they’re saying death to the dictator death to Harmony the the supreme leader death to raisy the the president this is like a big freaking deal to say yeah death to the leader of your own country but but they in front of the police what you’re saying though is that even people who are on this more conservative perhaps like more religious side of things are on the side of being able to choose if you want to yeah and follow that or if you don’t and then this idea of being killed because you don’t follow this particular lifestyle they’ve decided like no that’s not for us like we believe in this in this particular more stringent perhaps more conservative thing but that does not mean in that other people have to believe in it or they should be punished I think it’s a mix I think it’s people saying enough everybody I feel like has felt a level of repression in Iran and it has come to a head and and seeing the way that women who everybody has women in their family who have had to deal with the morality police right and so I think it’s a it’s like a shared experience that everyone can understand and it’s completely ridiculous I think it has to do like you said with people saying enough of using religion at like trying to have everyone conform to the same religion people have had enough and something that has been such a rallying cry for Iranians in Iran and outside of Iran is the is the chant right um Zan zendeki Azadi that translates to woman life Freedom it’s a Persian translation of a Kurdish militant slogan that was repeated by masa’s or Gina’s mom at her funeral right woman life Freedom it’s such a hopeful instead of saying death too it’s such a hopeful chant that has been that something that everyone can identify with and what I thought was kind of interesting about the origin of that of that phrase was that her her mother said this at her funeral which was a really private intimate event right it was something that the government was not allowing them to to more born publicly but somebody had a video camera at the funeral projected it everyone saw it or reposted it and that became the rallying Cry of the demonstration it was something that everybody could say without like you know you could believe in woman like freedom without saying death to whatever yeah so this has been such a this movement has caught on so quickly around Iran and around the world yeah around the world and you’re seeing like just today I was seeing videos of these school girls running out the regional Director of Education out of the schoolyard so imagine like 500 13 year olds 14 year olds running after the sky telling him to get the hell out right nothing scary nothing scarifying that a bunch of preteens yeah screaming at you you have kids that are pulling they’re ripping out the pages of their textbooks that have the um the picture of the supreme leader in it they’re ripping it out of their textbooks and throwing it down the hallway people are like chanting and singing this this amazing song that will play for you guys at the end but there’s an artist named run named shervin hajipur he’s young Iranian artist who wrote a song during these demonstrations that was comprised of a lot of tweets that people had put out um about the Revolution and he put them together and composed the most beautiful song it makes me cry every time I hear it um everybody around the world and Iran is singing that song at the protests a week ago I went to a protest that that was happening all around the world these solidarity protests so and we found out that at every one of these protests that were in 150 cities around the world they were playing his song and everybody was singing along to it and it’s just like we’re crying we’re singing and this Anthem is just is representing what everyone is fighting for which is like a chance yeah a chance and and people singing it together I think is really representative of of people coming together and being able to to have like one voice in that way yes and not being not being you know there’s so many things so many so many issues that Iran Iranian people have with each other like any other Society right there’s no single idea or ideal of what would work but right now there is such Unity over this idea that it’s we’re not asking for reform we’re asking for a whole sale regime change which is something that has also not happened and and 40 years and so what’s been really beautiful is there’s so many people around the world that are saying things so many Iranians there’s I will say there’s always a risk and I think a lot of Iranians feel this is always a risk for speaking out yeah that they’ll be targeted and put in prison and kidnapped and murdered and yeah but this is for Iranians abroad too oh yeah because every time yeah you say something you post something you think if I want to go back to Iran are they going to am I going to get in trouble for this I mean just just this particular thing that you’re doing is extremely Brave to to dedicate this this piece to to inform I mean I I think that the main thrust behind why we wanted to do this particular piece is I think what what I’d love to end on is like how can our friends listening help like how can we be a support to the people who need that support and really like just just the what you’ve said so far about educating everyone on on the different facets of the conversation and the event timeline and what what people are fighting for yeah how can we amplify that voice because my hope and assumption is that all of our friends listening are on the right side uh here so how can we yeah and I will say I want to thank that a number of people have reached out to me from from our like podcast friends who have asked what they can do and it means it means a lot so there are two free things that everyone can do okay the first one is support by re-sharing reposting stories and using the hashtags that the demonstrations are using why this is important is that we have to keep the story alive despite tens of thousands of over a hundred thousand people around the world coming out for demonstrations last week in solidarity no major media Outlet covered the protests right really bizarre so keeping the story alive that has been done just by people on social media right but keep it going re-share the videos that you see the post about what’s happening in Iran I understand that it can feel like you’re paying lip service by just reading something and reposting it right but in this case Iranian people have asked for it they have said keep sharing our story because they’re screaming it’s like they’re screaming into this Echo chamber and what is keeping so much of the momentum going is this feeling that they are not demonstrating in a vacuum yeah that the people around the world are seeing them and hearing them and saying something about it and the government is counting on the story dying out okay they’ve shut down the internet in so many parts of the country they’ve limited mobile access and in like so I had done the city I told you where they had the massacre of 70 people the internet is still out yeah right they’re hoping that people aren’t able to get the stories out of what’s happening and I know there’s organizations I know that there’s an organization up in San Francisco I believe that’s purely dedicated to restoring the internet and trying to make sure that Communications are yeah exactly exactly and I’ll talk about that one’s just a second okay great um because that’s a great one and so you can come to my profile and see what I post but I will also put some stuff in the show notes cool to to for you to see who are the who are the reputable people for you to follow but when you are posting use the Masa emini amini hashtag use the Iran protest hashtag that’s a way for you to search what’s happening but also to share and show show your support because Iranian people aren’t asking for an intervention okay they’re asking for coverage they’re just asking for attention and um it’s just a nice way to remind people that they aren’t suffering individually right the other major way that you can support is by helping circumvent internet censorship okay there are two ways of doing this it’s very this is a very easy and really important one to do mostly because the regime is trying to control what information is going in and out of Iran right by shutting down mobile access like I said severely restricted internet access WhatsApp and Instagram for example have been the biggest target so when Iranians managed to get a few minutes of day a day on on the internet they are using vpns they’re using internet proxies to bypass right in the way that we can help is run something called snowflake it’s a browser extension so it doesn’t work on a mobile device you have to use it on your desktop or your laptop but you can become an internet proxy it took me 2 minutes to download or to like go through the process of downloading it but you basically leave your browser on and then you see how many people you have helped circumvent censorship in the last 24 hours so for me when I open it now it says 25 people there is a lot of great information on the snowflake uh website but this is run by um the Tor Group which does work with the San Francisco organization that you that you talked about but it’s not like downloading something funky onto your computer you there’s even a way of just opening a tab and running it if you don’t want to have a browser extension the other way of helping is becoming a signal proxy this will help Iranians gain access to Signal which is an encrypted messaging service right and so this is just another way again of helping them bypass the government restrictions and the blocking of signal and we’ll put these these URLs in the show notes so that you can just click and read about them and yeah okay and decide and decide what we’re work so number one re-share post keep posting number two is help circumvent internet censorship I mean it feels very like matrixy to be doing this kind of stuff but it’s very simple and very straightforward the last one if you want more show up to a protest in your town it means the [ ] world when non-iranians show up to events like that I had a couple of my good friends who are not Iranian show up and I just I don’t know I mean emotionally this is a very difficult time for a lot of Iranians but seeing the visual of seeing people that are not from your community care about your community makes makes a big difference so if you are in any any City all of our friends listening how do you have advice on like the best way to find one of those uh protests to go and join yeah the the account I recommend following is at Middle East matters it’s on Instagram at Middle East matters okay they have been posting all the information on kind of these centrally organized uh protests so I think that’s the best the best place to go okay I’d love to end um by playing a song that has become the anthem of all of these protests it was written by the artist I told you about sharvin hajipud he used the tweets about the protest to compose a song after it was downloaded 40 million times he was arrested we don’t know what his status is um but the song has become an Anthem and they the government the police made him take his the song down but by the time they had done it 40 million people had downloaded it and it could not be it could not be taken down and so everybody has been playing uh it’s beautiful I’ll link to a version of it that you can watch where you see the translation of what he’s saying but thanks guys for for listening thank you for supporting and um thanks for sharing with us I think all of this is a reminder that we’re all experiencing you know a version yeah of this right and and women women life freedom is a is a phrase that we can all get behind we can all get behind it so yeah if you if you took the time to listen to today’s uh Special Report then please take the time to take some kind of action after even if it’s just telling family and friends what you learn yeah thank you for sharing woman life Freedom guys [Music] [Music] [Music] oh yeah [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]