Welcome to Woman, Life, Freedom: All In On Iran, a podcast series in which we go deep in conversations with experts on various aspect of the revolutionary uprising that began in Iran in September 2022, when 22-year old Mahsa Jina Amini was killed in Morality Police detention.
Women and men of all walks of life – many of them very young – poured into the streets to demand the downfall of the Islamic Republic, chanting slogans that were unprecedented in the history of the now 44-year-old state. These protests were groundbreaking and different from previous ones in that they showed a united front among societal groups, including Iran’s large yet marginalized minorities, and a complete disavowal of the central ideological tenets of the Islamic Republic. The state security forces responded by killing more than 500 protestors on the streets, executing four after arrest, maiming hundreds of people who are now left without an eye or have pellet hole marks all over their bodies, and imprisoning over 20,000 people, both protestors but also journalists, lawyers, human rights activist, filmmakers, artists, and anyone with a voice whom they suspected of harboring sympathies with the movement.
In each episode, we unpack an important aspect of what has been a historic moment unfolding in Iran. We draw both on our experts’ professional insights, but also engage with them as humans living through these momentous times.