As tens of thousands of mourners thronged the streets of Tehran on Wednesday to mourn the death of Iran’s late President Ebrahim Raisi, others opted to stay home and carry out quiet acts of resistance to the repressive regime.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers at the funeral of Mr Raisi, foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other officials who were killed in Sunday’s helicopter crash near the Azerbaijan border.
State television showed tens of thousands mourners following the funeral procession as they wept, beat their chests and tossed scarves and other possessions onto the truck holding the caskets for blessing.
Iran has proclaimed five days of mourning following the deaths with government offices and private businesses ordered to close on Wednesday to coincide with the public event. Tehran residents were sent text messages calling on them to “attend the funeral of the martyr of service”.
Yet behind the scenes, some in Iran have defied government orders, opting instead to go about their day as usual or celebrate in small ways.
Sara, 27, an activist in the Iranian city of Shiraz, said some people were quietly resisting calls for national mourning by sharing sweets with family and friends and ignoring the order to stop work.
Mr Raisi was dubbed the “butcher of Tehran” for his fearsome role in executing political prisoners during the 1980s. He also carried out hardline policies aimed at entrenching clerical power and cracking down on opponents including protesters following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022.
Niki Mahjoub, 45, senior reporter at Iran International based in London, said she had mixed feelings hearing the news of Mr Raisi’s death as those who lost family members to the “butcher of Tehran” will never get answers as to where their loved ones are.
“I would have preferred to find out what happened,” she told i. “He was a president that whatever he did made the life of people worse and worse and worse.
Ms Mahjoub said while some people in the country are supportive of the current leadership, others were celebrating despite the threat of arrest.
“In Tehran most of the pastry shops are empty because lots of people buy pastry and celebrate,” she said, adding that others were questioning why Western leaders had sent condolences.
Ms Mahjoub said the Iranian regime has also cracked down on public dissent following news of the crash, sending text messages to those who had posted on social media asking for them to be removed or ordered to the police station to face questioning. Journalists were warned publishing anything disparaging about the government or Mr Raisi would lead to consequences, in a sign of the state’s brittle grip on power, she said.
