These three side articles accompany the update of October 10 reposted from revcom.us.

Attack on Sharif University Sparks Shock, Resistance

At the elite Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, students had been holding a sit-in on campus on October 2, 2022, when the campus was surrounded and exits blocked by large numbers of Basiji (armed plainclothes paramilitary), and riot police and security forces opened fire through the gate with rubber bullets and paintballs, hitting the students, some on their heads and necks, some on their legs and arms. There were screams for help. Students collapsed, bleeding from their wounds.

Seventy professors rushed to lock arms around the students to protect them. Many were also beaten with batons and threatened with death. Students who tried to escape through a parking lot were hunted down to the stutter of paintball and rubber bullet guns, then shoved into vans with bags over their heads.

“We thought they were going to kill us,” said Mahan, a 25-year-old engineering student at Sharif. “It felt like we were in a war zone and the enemy was hunting us down looking for victims to slay.”

Parents and other Tehran residents in their cars gathered outside the gates to try to defend the students, creating a miles-long traffic jam around the campus, honking their horns and shouting “death to the dictator” from their windows.

Although the government has released some students, many remain in custody, and others are missing. Faculty members have said they will not teach, online or in person, until all students are released and their safety is guaranteed.

The attack on Sharif, both for its blatant brutality and due to Sharif’s elite standing, shocked people inside and outside of Iran. A statement condemning the attack was signed by more than 700 academics in the US and Canada, including seven Nobel laureates.*

* “Geniuses” Versus the Guns: A Campus Crackdown Shocks Iran,New York Times, October 6, 2022

Voices and Video from Iran

“The situation is so ridiculously messed up that they are literally checking people's phones. The people that are passing by in the street could be arrested and prosecuted.

“I have had friends that were arrested. I have had friends that were threatened to stay silent, or they will be prosecuted. I have had friends that had to literally run for their lives from the hands of the cops that right now are trying to suppress them.

“I want this government gone, because I want to live like a normal human being with human rights, with the rights to express myself without the fear of literally being killed.”

• Young woman in Southeast Tehran (Voices of women inside and outside Iran on the uprising after Mahsa Amini’s death, PBS Newshour, October 7, 2022)

"They can kill us, arrest us but we will not remain silent anymore. Our classmates are in jail. How can we remain silent?”

A university student who was on his way to join protests in Tehran (Women students tell Iran's president to "get lost" as unrest rages, Reuters, October 8, 2022)

On October 4, the New York Times published a photo essay “What Video Footage Reveals About the Protests in Iran.” Here are a few excerpts:

“Multiple videos show a consistent theme of protesters attacking structures and symbols that represent Iran’s government, in some cases setting fire to municipal structures.”

“In the past, the families of those killed by security forces have been intimidated by the authorities into keeping quiet. But this latest round of protests has seen videos of funeral services uploaded online showing displays of public mourning, such as a woman cutting her hair over a coffin.”

“Videos also show women in direct, physical confrontation with security forces, not only putting themselves at the forefront of demonstrations, but physically pushing back against the police when challenged.”

International Solidarity with the Women and People of Iran

Actions worldwide in solidarity with Iran’s uprising and in condemnation of the murder of Mahsa Amini and other outrages of the regime against women are too numerous to mention here. They range from international celebrities to tens of thousands of marchers and still more social media interactions. Here are a few standouts:

JAKNA (Afghanistan New Communist Movement) posted on Instagram a solidarity statement in Farsi, translated by IEC volunteers:

We are a group of Afghan men and women from all over the world; From Kabul, Herat and Hazara, to Mashhad, Tehran, and Zahedan, from Pakistan, Istanbul, and Greece to all over Europe and America. In this campaign, we want to support the uprising of women and men in Iran against the mandatory hijab and against the criminal Islamic Republic of Iran. We consider ourselves as part of this uprising and our hearts are with the rebels of Iran and our voices are aligned with their voices...

See the full list of signers in English at IEC website.

Prominent figures in Iran’s film industry have spoken out, many of them living in Iran under threat of retaliation, including Oscar-winning Asghar Farhadi.

Amid protests across Iran, many women have adopted the political symbolism of cutting off their hair (an expression of grief going back many centuries) as a furiously ironic message to the theocrats: “If showing a few strands of hair bothers you so much you’d kill for it, well, take this.” (Iranian women at home and abroad cut their hair to protest Mahsa Amini’s death, Los Angeles Times, October 6, 2022)

This act has spread widely. In just a couple of examples, award-winning French actresses Marion Cotillard, Juliette Binoche and peers posted videos of cutting off their hair on the Instagram account @soutienfemmesiran (“Support Women in Iran”), and at the Antalya Film Festival in Turkey, Zhaleh Inje, the producer of the film "Narperi Bangle" and other actors of the film cut their hair on stage and said: We are all Mahsa Amini.