A look at the Saedinia case and the principle of the personal nature of judicial matters in a conversation with Fereydoun Jafari/Ali Kalai

The January 1404 protests were the bloodiest protests in Iran’s contemporary history, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people and leaving profound human, social, and legal consequences. In addition to its catastrophic human dimensions, this event also presented the country’s legal and judicial order with unprecedented challenges; challenges in which the boundary between “maintaining […]...

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Jahangir Shahvari: The Saedinia case is intended to intimidate and warn society / Pedram Tahseni

The protests of January 1404, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of protesters and the widespread use of violence by security agencies, have been described by many as the bloodiest protests in the contemporary history of Iran and the world. The consequences of these protests were not limited to the streets and mass arrests, […]...

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Why was January 1404 bloody?/ Majid Shia Ali

Throughout the contemporary history of the world, various governments have been responsible for the killing of a large portion of their citizens, from the crimes of the Khmer Rouge to the history of genocide in Bosnia, from the Nazi gas chambers to the famines resulting from the policies of the Stalin and Mao governments. Even […]...

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Testaments of an Uprising/Naimeh Doostdar

January 1404 was a time for a number of protesters to say their “last words”; a sentence recorded in a few lines on Instagram stories, or in a few-second video, sometimes in a brief call to family, and sometimes in a will that the survivors tried to carry out without fail. These messages, republished in […]...

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From the rule of law to the state of confiscation/ Sara Qureshi

Introduction: Terminological explanation In this article, the concept of the general power of the state is consciously used, not political sovereignty. This choice of language is not accidental. The state here is not simply the construction of political power, but an institution that, in the logic of public law, is responsible for implementing the law, […]...

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Witness accounts of the January 1404 uprising/ Nafiseh Sharaf al-Dinini

The accumulated crises in the political, economic, and social structure of the Islamic Republic reached an explosive point in January 1404, which, in terms of geographical scope, the intensity of government violence, and the depth of popular demands, constituted the most unprecedented challenge to governance in Iran’s contemporary history. The January 1404 uprising, which sprouted […]...

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Silence for the Killing/Amir Aghaei

The following text is a scribble by a young man from inside Iran about the internet shutdown during the recent protests. It was originally supposed to be a report on the internet shutdown, but I couldn’t. No matter how much I tried to maintain an impartial tone of reporting, I couldn’t. No matter how much […]...

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After the collapse of institutional trust/ Kazem Alamdari

Introduction: From political crisis to normative crisis The political developments in Iran in recent years cannot be analyzed simply in terms of a recurring cycle of “protest-repression.” What happened in the recent uprising—and especially the government’s response to it—reflects the entry of the Islamic Republic’s political order into a qualitatively different phase. At this stage, […]...

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When Politics Turns into Death/Diako Moradi

Introduction: The Problem of State Violence in an Era of Collapsed Legitimacy In the classical tradition of political science, state violence was often analyzed as an exceptional means of containing crisis and restoring order, something that made sense in the context of Weber’s “legitimate monopoly of violence.” In this view, legitimacy was not only a […]...

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Digital Isolation as a Power Strategy/Fereshte Goli

…and suddenly, total darkness and a heavy silence of ignorance about what had happened on the streets of Iran. Everything was a sign of a disaster. All communication and information channels had been cut off. News was passed around, with a multitude of worrying and frightening speculations broadcast from satellite news networks. On January 18, […]...

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The right to treatment under security fire/Musa Barzin

During the recent protests, we witnessed many bitter incidents and extra-legal actions in Iran. One of these cases was the restriction of treatment for protesters in various forms. According to reports published from the very first days of the protests, police and security forces attacked hospitals where injured protesters had been taken, creating heartbreaking scenes. […]...

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The Wounded Memory of a Protest/Mina Jawani

The protests of January 1404 are remembered neither as a single image nor as a narrative that can be easily retold. What remains is more of a scattering: unfinished scenes, videos that were cut short, streets that emptied sooner than expected. They neither became a moment of triumph nor a complete defeat; they remain in […]...

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