As demonstrations in Iran enter a third week, schoolgirls have taken to the streets, removing their headscarves and chanting “death to the dictator” as they trampled on the photos of Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the two supreme leaders who have ruled the country since the 1979 revolution.
On Monday, footage posted on social media showed female students in the conservative city of Mashhad writing anti-regime slogans on blackboards, taking their hijabs off and marching onto public streets, shouting “shame on you.”
Similar demonstrations occurred in Karaj, and in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj, where girls protested without their hijabs, yelling “Women. Life. Freedom.”
In the southern city of Shiraz, female students blocked traffic on a main road while shouting “death to the dictator” and waving their headscarves in the air.
On Tuesday, President Ebrahim Raisi called for unity against the protests, repeating the official government line that the protests were being driven by Iran’s enemies.
At the parliament session, he said: “Today the country’s determination is aimed at cooperation to reduce people’s problem. Unity and national integrity are necessities that render our enemy hopeless.”
However public fury has only exacerbated since the discovery of the body of missing 17-year-old girl Nika Shahkarami, who vanished last month during the protests in Tehran. Her body was found lying on a street, with head and facial wounds.
Following Raisi’s latest public comments, girls in Karaj retaliated, and reportedly forced an education official out of their school, throwing what appears to be empty water bottles at him.
Today in Iran, schoolgirls remove their compulsory hejab and chant “death to the dictator” while stomping on the photos of their rulers https://t.co/ipQPSZhsvC
— Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) October 3, 2022
In another video from Karaj, girls are seen shouting, “If we don’t unite, they will kill us one by one.”
Across the country, images of girls conducting their own revolt have been posted on social media, with some raising their middle fingers at the photos of their two leaders as a gesture of their defiance against the oppressive regime.