What is happening in Iran today is a revolt for personal freedom, civil rights and human dignity.
Reports from Tehran and many other cities describe hundreds of deaths, thousands of injured people and mass arrests. These figures are necessarily incomplete, obscured by internet shutdowns and communication blackouts imposed by the regime to hide the scale of repression.
We are witnessing systematic state violence: weapons used against protesters, torture, intimidation of families and summary trials aimed at crushing dissent.
Behind the Numbers Are People
Behind these statistics there are faces, stories and lives cut short.
One of them was Rubina Aminian, 23 years old, a fashion student in Tehran.
She was studying, planning her future and taking part in a peaceful demonstration. She was killed by regime forces, and her family was even denied the right to a public and dignified mourning.
Remembering Rubina means remembering that this is not an abstract debate.
It is about young people who were asking for a normal life.
The Continuity of “Women, Life, Freedom”
What we see today is part of a broader movement that began after the killing of Mahsa Amini, when Iranian women took to the streets chanting “Women, Life, Freedom.”
Those women asked not to be forgotten.
They asked for the right to live without fear, to choose what to do with their own bodies, to walk freely in public spaces.
These protests have been brutally repressed, but they have opened an irreversible fracture between the regime and a large part of Iranian society — especially young people, women and minorities.
This Is Not an “Anti-Western” Protest
Those who protest in Iran today are demanding rights that many of us take for granted:
the right to study, to work, to love, to express oneself, to dissent.
At a time when democracies are often described as being in crisis, people are dying in Iran for the very freedoms that define liberal democratic societies.
Further Reading & Sources
For readers who wish to explore the situation in Iran and the broader struggle for human rights and democracy, the following international sources provide verified data and in-depth analysis:
- United Nations – Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, reports on the repression of protests and human rights violations in Iran.
Read more: UN Human Rights situation in Iran - Amnesty International, documentation on the crackdown against protesters, women and civil society in Iran.
Read more: Amnesty International – Iran - Human Rights Watch, analysis of state violence, arbitrary arrests and suppression of dissent.
Read more: Human Rights Watch – Iran - United Nations Women, background on women’s rights and gender-based repression in Iran.
Read more: UN Women – Iran
Read the original Italian version
This article is based on a broader reflection originally written in Italian, addressing the Iranian protests within the context of European democratic values and international human rights commitments.
The original Italian version is available here:
Support the Iranian people’s revolution – Italian version