Duisburg.
political scientist dr. Fatemeh Hippler sees the regime behind the poison gas attacks on girls’ schools. But the women would not give up.
Nausea, palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness – thousands of schoolgirls showed the typical symptoms of poisoning after numerous mysterious gas attacks in Iran. Schools for girls or dormitories for female students are always the targets of the attacks. Despite initial arrests, nobody in Iran believes that the regime will seriously investigate the brutal acts. “People are convinced that the wave of poisonings in schools is a punishment for the girls because they are in the front row in the protests against the regime,” says Dr. Fatemeh Hippler. Protests that have been going on for months and have been brutally fought by the mullahs’ regime from the start.
The 40-year-old journalist and political scientist studied in Tehran and came to Germany in 2012 on a doctoral scholarship. She keeps in touch with her family, friends, relatives and colleagues in her home country via social media on a daily basis. She is convinced that the girls should now pay for their courage. “These young women have nothing left to lose. There are no good schools, no free life, no future. They don’t want to make any more compromises,” says Fatemeh Hippler, who went by the name Kamali Chirani before she married. “Why should they?”
Attacks as a terrorist tactic
The poisonings are controlled by the regime of the Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or are at least tolerated by him. First the government denied the incidents, then it was allegedly foreign agents. Now the regime is officially trying to clarify. All this is not credible, she finds. The series of attacks followed a terrorist tactic. “The girls shouldn’t go to school anymore, they should be scared,” says Hippler. The poisoning added another trauma to the people of Iran, “It’s unbelievable and makes me sad and angry. But we have to go further now,” she says. “We can’t go back.”
She is sitting upright and with an open gaze in a small Moroccan café in Duisburg. Her silky green, shimmering jacket with oriental patterns is reminiscent of her homeland. In the background, a soft singsong drips uninterruptedly from the loudspeakers, “that’s a typical way of reciting the Koran,” she says. “I like hearing that.” She wears her dark hair cropped short. Out of protest? Out of solidarity with the demonstrating women in their homeland? She doesn’t want to come across as opportunistic, because up until about a year ago she always wore a hijab, the traditional headscarf, in public, even in Germany, she explains. “I felt more comfortable with it.”
Destroyed hopes for reform
But now she doesn’t wear it anymore. Not because she suddenly wants to make herself superficially mean to the demonstrators, saying she had already taken it off before the wave of protests. “It was a personal process.” Explaining that is obviously important to her. Her sister, a teacher, now also goes to the market in Iran without a headscarf. “That was absolutely unthinkable until a few months ago,” she marvels.
Fatemeh Hippler was born and grew up in Rusht, the capital of the province of Gilan near the Caspian Sea. The city is known for its liberal flair. She studied journalism and cultural studies at the State University of Tehran. She admits that she wasn’t a radical opponent of the regime at the time. She had hoped for gradual change, for dialogue and reforms. “The younger generation is less ideological, they are cosmopolitan, modern, liberal, full of life and hungry for education. I thought that you can slowly and persistently build a democracy.”
“People want regime change”
This hope is destroyed, not only for them. The women and the demonstrators now lack the patience for reforms. What Iran has experienced since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody on September 16, 2022 is not just a wave of protests or an uprising, but a revolution. After 40 years of oppression, the regime has brought the people this far. “People don’t want reform anymore, they want regime change.”
Conflicts that were previously kept under wraps are breaking out everywhere, she reports. On the market, in schools and families. The hijab is increasingly becoming a political identifier. Many women no longer wear headscarves on the streets, which is a political-religious statement. As well as continue to wear one.
Although the wave of protests has subsided somewhat at the moment, there is a certain unrest in the air, an expectation that something could happen at any moment. Fatemeh Hippler puts it this way: “The street is pregnant.” Something could break out and be “born” at any time, because the regime has its legitimacy and people have lost their fear. They shout: “Women. Life. Freedom!”
Opposition is fragmented
What will come after that, she doesn’t know. The opposition is divided. Supporters of the monarchy want the Shah or the prince back. There are liberal democrats, communists, socialists, reformers and Islamist fundamentalists. But they all have one goal: the mullahs have to go. As quickly as possible.
“Some even want Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.” They hope that this could finally bring down the ailing government house of cards. “Imagine that,” she says, stretching, “people want their own country to be attacked.” So that something changes.
>>>> Zur Person:
Fatemeh Hippler (40) is research assistant at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Research at the TU Dresden. She studied at the Institute for North American Studies at the University of Tehran and completed her studies in 2009 with a master’s degree. She worked as a journalist and English teacher.
In 2012 she received a doctoral scholarship from Bread for the World, initially did research at the University of Duisburg-Essen and in 2018 completed her doctorate at the University of Augsburg on the subject of “Intercultural Dialogue between the West and Muslim Countries”. She lives in Duisburg.
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