In Paris, demonstrators waved many Iranian flags and placards with slogans like “Women, Life, Freedom” or “They kill us in your silence #mahsaamini” (they kill us in your silence). GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP
Thousands of people rallied in Paris and other French cities on Saturday October 29 to support the protest movement that has rocked Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini and to call for more pressure on the regime in Tehran.
According to the Paris police headquarters, 2,500 people took part in the rally on the Place de la République in the capital. The protesters waved many Iranian flags and placards with slogans like “Women, Life, Freedom” or “They kill us in your silence #mahsaamini” (they kill us in your silence).
“I think there’s a real revolution going on and I think they’re going to be free,” said Mahtab Ghorbani, 39, a writer who has been in exile in France for the past five years and is one of the organizers of the rally. “I am very happy about the solidarity of the French who cut their hair and share videos. On the other hand, we need somewhat stricter measures at the political and diplomatic level,” said Mahboubeh Moradi, 35, an anthropology student and a member of the collective at the initiative of the demonstration.
In Toulouse there were about 150 at the parade. Armed with Iranian flags, the protesters formed a human chain while shouting “Women, Life, Freedom”.
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Demonstrations are brutally suppressed
In Lyon, according to the Rhône Prefecture, around 250 people followed the call of the collective of former Lyon students and took part in a march from Place Bellecour. They held up placards “Solidarity for Freedom”, “We are all in revolt”, “#MahsaAmini” and chanted “We don’t want an Islamic regime, we don’t want a misogynistic regime”, “Yes to a democratic republic in Iran”.
“We want France to think more about human rights than economic interests,” said Saeed Shafiei, 47, a member of the collective. For this Franco-Iranian PhD student at the Institute for Political Studies (IEP) in Lyon, “the Iranian diasporas in France must give energy to those” who have been fighting for “43 days” against a “totalitarian and repressive” killer of more than 200 Iranian brothers and Sisters”, but above all that “foreign powers are acting”.
In Iran, protests led in particular by women have not abated since the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman. Mahsa Amini died three days after she was arrested in Tehran by morality police who accused her of violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. In the course of brutally suppressed demonstrations, slogans that were openly directed against the Islamic Republic founded in 1979 were added to the original slogan “women, life, freedom”.