Workshop and symposium on the uprising in Iran

Jin, Jiyan, Azadî – Woman, Life, Freedom! That’s what the women and men on the streets of Iran are shouting after the young Kurdish woman Jina Masha Amini was mistreated and died in the custody of the morality police in Tehran on 16 September 2022. The rallying cry of the mass protests also unites worldwide supporters of the uprising against the Iranian regime. In Bremen, an online workshop and symposium on the current situation in Iran took place at the beginning of March, with the protest slogan as its title and with the support of the alumni association. What made the event so special: everything was prepared and organised jointly by students in Bremen and from Rojava, the Kurdish region of Syria.

Jina Amina was from the city of Saqqez in northwestern Iran, a predominantly Kurdish region that the Kurds call Rohjilat. In recent months, the uprising against the regime has been fiercest and most sustained In the Kurdish areas of Iran, as well as in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. This is also where most of the hundreds of deaths have occurred as a result of state terror. Resistance against the religious dictatorship is also (and has been) particularly pronounced at the country's many universities.

In the online workshop, the 40 or so participants wanted to know what role students have played in the uprising so far. Alongside women who oppose the rigid and discriminatory dress codes, it is mainly students who have taken their protest to the streets of Tehran and other large cities, said guests who conferenced in from various regions of Iran. The following day’s symposium dealt with the political philosophy and origins of the slogan "Jin, Jiyan, Azadi", and the interplay between the Iranian Revolution, especially in the country's Kurdish regions, and the women's revolution in Rojava, the Kurdish area of northern Syria.

Political groups and academics are united in their assessment that in Iran itself, the weeks and months ahead will be decisive – it will soon be clear whether the resistance is strong enough to topple the regime or if it will be forced to go underground again.

Around 250 participants attended the symposium online, many from universities in Rojava. The University of Rojava in the Kurdish city of Qamishli has been cooperating with Uni Bremen's Faculty 9 – Cultural Studies for around two years. As an outgrowth of one of their joint seminars, the Initiative of Mutual Studies of the Students of Rojava and Bremen (IMS) was formed, which organised the symposium in solidarity with the Iranian resistance.