Despite lethal repression, Iran’s protests continue

at 10pm Mahvash, a university student, opens the window of her fifth-floor flat and starts yelling. Neighbours take up her refrain of “Women, Life, Freedom!”. Soon her chants against Iran’s theocracy echo from block to block above the riot police below—and across Tehran, the capital. Some protesters wear masks to avoid identification. Many switch off the lights. Almost all the voices are women’s. “Blood that is spilled unfairly will boil until the end of time,” runs an old Persian saying, now back in fashion.Almost a month after at the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman detained by the for showing too much hair, Iran’s ayatollahs are still struggling to keep order. Unrest has spread across the country, prompting strikes in some bazaars and oil installations. State news bulletins that had ignored the protests now denounce them as foreign plots. And in an effort to regain full control the ayatollahs have reinforced the police with units of ideological paramilitaries known as the The loyalty of the army, which has stayed on the sidelines, has yet to be tested.