Contrasting Iran and Myanmar

Episode #162: Pardis Mahdavi, Provost and Executive Vice-President as well as professor of anthropology at the University of Montana, joins the conversation to talk about the growing discontent and protests in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which shares several similarities with the situation in Myanmar.

Professor Mahdavi describes an interesting dynamic that arose in the mid-20th century: the Iranian people’s growing disgust with what they call “westoxification,” a term referring to the Pahlavi Shahs’ infatuation with Western cultures, and their push for changes within Iranian society which often went against Iranian Islamic social and cultural mores. The motto was “Iran for Iranians.” Ayatollah Khomeini became the most popular and inspirational of the anti-Shah voices, giving a very Islamic face to the Iranian people’s discontent. However, after the 1979 Revolution, the Islamic government grew more brutal and repressive, instituted the Morality Police, engaged in the catastrophic Iran-Iraq War, etc. History began to repeat itself, as popular discontent festered under the surface and then eventually burst out into the open, much like it had under the Pahlavi regime.

The situations in Myanmar and Iran are similar in several ways. Some of the sparks that ignited widespread popular protests against the junta came in the form of the military gunning down teenagers in the street, and the latest iteration of anti-government protests in Iran exploded with the death of a Kurdish-Iranian teenager arrested by the Morality Police and subsequently beaten to death in police custody. As with the regime’s brutal military crackdown on protests in Myanmar, Iran’s Islamic government has responded with harsh, repressive measures. But just as the increased repression in Myanmar has only strengthened the Burmese people’s resolve to resist, a similar dynamic is happening in Iran. In both Myanmar and Iran, the resistance has seen a growing unity among the respective country’s diverse religious and ethnic populations. And in both cases, young people have been in the forefront of the protest movement. Finally, there is a real need to keep international attention on the situations in Myanmar and Iran, so that the democratic movements are not isolated and can be supported.

Professor Mahdavi ends by asking the listening audience to “think about what kind of a situation must people be facing to be willing to die for their cause?… What we can do to support them and to bring about meaningful and lasting social change that is rooted in justice and human rights for all?”