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Youth Social Movements in the MENA Region

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Youth Social Movements in the MENA Region Dossier: Social Movements, Digital Transformations and Changes in the Mediterranean Region Dossier Social Transformation in a Digital Age: Youth Social Movements in the MENA Region Mahmood Monshipouri, PhD moting equality between men and women, as well as Professor, Department of International Relations documenting lived and painful experiences that Ira- San Francisco State University nian women have long endured. Lecturer, University of California, Berkeley This campaign demonstrated the vibrancy of Iran’s feminist movement, despite the State’s repressive measures to contain it. The judiciary sentenced both Resistance movements in the Middle East and North Ahmadi Khorasani and Ardalan to three years in pris- Africa (MENA) have assumed a unique social, political, on, and many other campaigners were prosecuted, and cultural character due in large part to the authori- jailed, and banned from travelling inside and outside tarian and repressive contexts of many regimes and the country.2 While the campaign as a social move- societies in the region. The recent growth and emer- ment received scant attention in the Western media, Social Movements, Digital Transformations and Changes in the Mediterranean Region gence of social movements in the MENA region points many of its supporters sought yet another opportu- to the inconsistent effectiveness of such movements, nity to express their demands. The 2009 Green 146 at best. In Iran, examples of such movements can be Movement afforded them that opportunity. traced back to two key developments: (1) the “One Mil- lion Signatures Campaign” of 2006 and (2) the Green Movement of 2009. In June 2006, when security forc- Iran’s Green Movement es violently disrupted a peaceful women’s rights dem- onstration, a small group of Iranian feminists in Tehran The 2009 Iranian presidential elections resulted in a embarked on the formation of a grassroots movement second term for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad known as the “One Million Signatures Campaign.”1 and led to a series of public protests against alleged Launched on 27 August 2006, by Noushin Ahmadi election fraud that came to be known as the Green Khorasani and Parvin Ardalan, this campaign aimed Movement. Promoted by digital interactions via in- to establish equal rights for women and upend dis- stant messaging and postings on Facebook, Twitter, criminatory laws, including, but not limited to those and YouTube, the protests posed a serious chal- relating to, citizenship, divorce, defining the age of lenge to the existing political order in Iran. The pro- criminal responsibility, blood money (diyeh), inherit- testers were predominantly young but also included ance and witness rights. The campaigners’ goal was members of Iran’s reformist segments who have long to collect one million signatures for a petition that sought broader democratic rights. The conservative 2019 requested the abolition of several laws that discrimi- ruling elements within Iran struggled to contain the nated against women. The completed petition was emerging political narratives and shape public per- submitted to the Iranian government with the aim of ceptions of these events. persuading it to take necessary legal actions against Although the regime’s repressive apparatus ultimately these laws, while also raising public awareness, pro- suppressed the Green Movement, it undeniably felt Mediterranean Yearbook 1 RAFIZADEH, Majid. “The Unrecognized Social Movements: ‘The One Million Signature Campaign’ and the Islamic State of Iran,” The Ahfad Journal, Vol. 31: 53-66, Issue 2, December 2014. Med. Med. 2 IE EBADI, Shirin. Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran, New York: Random House, 2016. threatened –if not shaken– by the efficiency and or- or alter the rules of the game –they have given the ganizational skills that allowed opposition groups to youth movement an unprecedented momentum to en- inspire popular protests on a scale unprecedented ter into the political arena, seek new economic oppor- Dossier since Iran’s 1979 revolution. During this brief period tunities, and redefine new terms of accountability.6 of protest in 2009, the movement galvanized a broad spectrum of Iran’s population, but most importantly among the country’s younger generation. The protest- While modern technologies are ers demanded basic freedoms and rights, while us- ing broadly based human rights rhetoric to stake their functionally neutral they have claims. The regime countered by invoking Iran’s se- given the youth movement an curity, sovereignty, and cultural uniqueness.3 unprecedented momentum to enter into the political arena The Arab Spring Uprisings Shortly thereafter, the momentous events of 2011 The frequent and energetic use of social media by gave rise to the so-called Arab awakening, a term that the people in the MENA region demonstrates the identified the uprising’s regional interconnectedness new platform for the voiceless and the underprivi- and its broader peaceful slogan: “The people want leged that the Internet offers. The emancipatory po- the fall of the regime.”4 Publicly known as the Arab tential of the digital age and related communication Spring uprisings, this broad unrest was largely spear- and information accessibility has made the struggles headed by youth social movements in Tunisia when a of ordinary people to remake their worlds feasible, street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire while also debunking the widely held belief about the Social Movements, Digital Transformations and Changes in the Mediterranean Region in response to the confiscation of his wares by local Arab people’s presumed resignation to their autocrat- 7 police officers. Bouazizi’s self-immolation struck a ic regimes. But at the same time, that potential has 147 chord among Tunisians, and protests swiftly spread been regularly manipulated – or even, more accurate- across the country, bringing a number of issues to ly, exploited – by authoritarian regimes bent on ma- the fore, most notably unemployment, food insecurity, nipulating social and political events. The effective- corruption, debilitating living conditions, lack of free- ness of social media in transforming these societies doms, and lack of government accountability.5 has been largely limited in repressive contexts char- The ensuing protests sparked considerable interest acterized by longstanding and enduring institutions, in social movements and tactics for mobilizing and rigid political structures, a persistent fear of economic developing grassroots action throughout the MENA uncertainties, and a culture of tolerating authoritarian- region. More specifically, social media gained massive ism in the face of political instability and a climate of traction as a vehicle for dissent during these waves fear and threat. of popular unrest. Increasingly, young people con- The sites of social and political mobilization and con- verted their dismay and rage into an enormous out- tentious actions – bolstered by both agency and stra- pouring of social and political activism by becoming tegic choices – have increasingly encountered struc- agents of change both in symbolic and substantive tural barriers. The growth of social movements, social ways. While modern technologies are functionally media, and political activism has coincided with the 2019 neutral–that is, they can either sustain the status quo increase in more repressive mechanisms of control 3 MONSHIPOURI, Mahmood. “The Green Movement and the Iranian People’s Struggle for Human Rights,” in VOLK, Lucia, (ed.), The Middle East in the World: An Introductory Guide. New York: Routledge, 2015, p. 195-208. 4 CLEVELAND, William L. and BUNTON, Martin. A History of the Modern Middle East, Sixth Edition, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2016, p. 538-539. 5 GELVIN, James L. The New Middle East: What Everyone Needs to Know, New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, p. 24. 6 Several arguments of this essay have been taken from my work elsewhere, Democratic Uprisings in the New Middle East: Youth, Technology, Mediterranean Yearbook Human Rights, and US Foreign Policy, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2014. 7 ANDERSON, Charles W. “Youth, ‘The Arab Spring,’ and Social Movements,” Review of the Middle East Studies, Vol. 74, No. 2, Winter 2013, Med. Med. p. 150-156; see especially p. 152. IE exercised by governments. It is not easy to strike a reform. For the region’s many young people, espe- proper balance between these conflicting trajecto- cially females, ICTs and social networking technolo- Dossier ries. The practical and policy implications of balanc- gy are enabling tools. ing these movements vs. government pushbacks re- By prompting interactivity and participation, where main open to debate. one becomes not only consumer but also creator of online content, and where sharing ideas and exchang- ing feedback becomes the norm, these new digital The Gezi Park Protests technologies enable often disconnected youth to re- configure patterns of participation, civil involvement, On 28 May 2013, the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey and self-expression.8 Access to new media has brought hundreds of thousands of people from transformed communications throughout the MENA across the country to the streets of Istanbul to pro- region and, together with the emergence of multiple test against the increasingly authoritarian style of Er- new satellite television channels (e.g., al-Jazeera and dogan’s government and his ruling party (the Justice al-Arabiyya), is likely to allow its citizens to further en- and Development
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