Strikes across Iran lead to shuttered shops and ghost towns
Businesses, shops and traditional bazaars in more than 50 cities across Iran were shuttered for a second day on Tuesday in what appeared to be one of the largest general strikes in decades, demonstrating the staying power of protests calling for the end to clerical rule in the country.
On Monday and Tuesday, footage shared online captured scenes of ordinary life brought to a standstill. Usually bustling centres of commerce and malls in small towns and big cities resembled ghost towns.
Businesses across the spectrum, from medical practices to butcher shops to supermarkets, closed their doors and told their staff not to come to work, according to residents in Teheran, Isfahan and other cities, and videos posted on social media.
In the narrow alleyways and arches that shape the storied bazaars of Teheran, the capital, as well as Shiraz and Tabriz, row after row of stores, restaurants and other businesses had locked their doors, videos showed.
Activists called for three days of strikes as the next phase of an uprising that began in September, after the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, in the custody of the morality police, who had arrested her on a street in Teheran for supposedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress laws.
The strikes also come days after Attorney General Mohammad Javad Montazeri said that the feared morality police had been “abolished”, according to state media. The government has neither confirmed nor denied it.
As protests rolled across the country after Amini’s death, demonstrators demanded a wholesale overhaul of the Islamic Republic.
They raised grievances against political and social repression, such as the mandatory hijab law and censorship, as well as corruption and economic mismanagement, which they said could only be resolved through regime change.
The government has greeted the protests with brutal crackdowns.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the judiciary, Masoud Setayeshi, said that five protesters had been sentenced to death on charges that they killed a plainclothes Basij militia member, Iranian state media reported. He also said that 11 other protesters, including three under age 18, had been sentenced to long prison terms.
In response to the strike action this week, authorities threatened to revoke licenses and arrest business owners. The head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, said security forces and the judicial authorities would identify and punish “rioters,” whom he accused of threatening shopkeepers and businesses to close, according to state media.
On Monday, security forces sealed a restaurant and a jewellery shop owned by Iranian soccer star Ali Daei after he announced on social media that he would join the nationwide strikes for three days, the Fars News Agency reported.
Sealing a business can result in the revocation of its license and the confiscation of the property.
While the economic effect of the strikes was not immediately clear, analysts said the action sent a message that the level of discontent was deep and widespread.
“Whether or not strikes are occurring has become symbolic of whether the protest movement is reaching a new phase,” said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, CEO of the Bourse and Bazaar Foundation, a London-based economic research institute focused on Iran.
Batmanghelidj said that in order to create real pressure, strikes needed to target production needs, interrupt industrial facilities and include widespread walkouts by blue-collar workers. But those workers and government employees risk losing their jobs.