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Iran protest in Aotea Square, Auckland (Photo: Negar Shirazi)
Iran protest in Aotea Square, Auckland (Photo: Negar Shirazi)

SocietySeptember 27, 2022

What’s happening in Iran right now?

Iran protest in Aotea Square, Auckland (Photo: Negar Shirazi)
Iran protest in Aotea Square, Auckland (Photo: Negar Shirazi)

Recent protests in Iran have spread around the world, including Aotearoa. Here’s what’s going on.

On September 13, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman was traveling to the capital city of Tehran to visit relatives when she was arrested by the so-called morality police for “improperly” wearing her mandatory hijab. In the police van she was beaten so severely that she went into a coma. Three days later she died from her horrific injuries.

Amini’s death has ignited protests and condemnation from Iranians around the country denouncing her death and the regime that imposed it. A regime that has been ruthlessly dictating and oppressing its people, particularly women and other minorities, for over 40 years. 

The protests have spread all over the country and the government is fighting back the only way it knows how: through brutality and violence. Over 41 people have already been killed, including children, and numerous arrested. As images of the unrest went global online, the government literally shut down the internet. Like other totalitarian states, Iran has very strict censorship rules including controlling what its people can view on the internet. Many Iranians use a VPN or other methods to access banned sites including Instagram and Whatsapp, which were also used to organise protests. Elon Musk has even chimed in noting that he’ll provide his satellite Starlink to provide internet in the country (though currently, its hardware has a hefty pricetag).

Global protests soon followed – including here in Aotearoa. It was heartening to see so many Iranians in the diaspora and non-Iranians standing in solidarity and vocalising their outrage and emotional denouncements of a regime that many had to escape from. My own extended family was there, some who still held the raw memories of the Revolution and regime change that upended their lives and drove them to leave their homeland for places unknown. Amid the chants for justice for Amini and calls for regime change, a few people took to cutting or shaving their hair off, in solidarity with the women in Iran who are bravely removing their hijabs and even burning them. For it is women who are leading this movement.

Photo: Negar Shirazi

Iran is no stranger to demonstrations – after all, it was the coalition of various people who protested the removal of the previous monarch which led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the formation of the Islamic Republic. However, unlike more recent protests such as the 2009 Green Movement that bitterly disputed the re-election of a hardline president, this protest involves Iranians from various economical and geographical backgrounds as well as different ethnic groups.

The timing is also evident due to worsening living conditions brought on by factors such as inflation and lack of resources like medication (much of which is caused by the sanctions imposed on the country by the US) and the shambolic and catastrophic response to the pandemic by the government (Iran was one of the countries worst hit by the virus, particularly in its early days). 

So why should we in New Zealand care what is happening in a country seemingly so far away? For the same reason we care about Black Lives Matter in the US and about the war in Ukraine. Because visible solidarity is vital.

We can help organise and partake in protests and rallies. We can sign and share this petition by Amnesty International asking foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta to do what she can to push the UN to investigate and ensure accountability. We can donate to various human rights causes that have been taking action such, as Amnesty and Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran. As actor Nazanin Boniadi notes in her post, we can also help get the Iranian people access to the internet through apps like Tor’s Project Snowflake, which can bypass censorship or even Google’s Outline VPN where one can set up a VPN server and share that access with those in Iran.

Photo: Negar Shirazi

At the very least, we should engage and spread the word. Since the protests erupted, Iranians inside Iran rely on us on the outside to spread their message and their images through social media videos and hashtags such as #Mahsa_Amini and #iranprotests2022. International condemnation has come (somewhat, although President Raisi was still making speeches, shaking hands and spending large at the UN just the other day) but more importantly it shows those on the frontline, those risking their lives for the cause, that they have our support at a time where their own government does not. They are everyday people just like us, who are fighting for the very rights we all deserve. If the pandemic (and grim dystopic films) have taught us anything it is the value of a shared humanity and how we all share a piece of it. 

Iran is renowned for its poetry, particularly from Ancient Persia where the poet Sa’adi lived. His words sit perfectly inscribed on a hand-made carpet installed at the United Nations in NYC:

Human beings are body parts of each other,

In creation they are indeed of one essence.

If a body part is afflicted with pain,

Other body parts uneasy will remain.

If you have no sympathy for human pain,

The name of human you shall not retain.

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SocietySeptember 27, 2022

The special horror of fixed term rentals

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Being forced to move again and again doesn’t just take an emotional toll, writes Ben Bradford – it’s also cost him thousands of dollars that could be going into a first home deposit.

I’ve been a resident of Tāmaki Makaurau for 10 years. In that time I have, depressingly, inhabited 13 different rentals.

Of course, some of those moves between places were expected, planned or entirely voluntary, as when I found myself living in a lousy flatting environment (I’ve had a few of those, but have learnt that Auckland is far too small to name names or detail specific crimes against fellow flatties).

However, most of the flatshares and rentals I’ve called home have come to an abrupt end due to a landlord selling up, moving a relative in, or to carry out renovations just as soon as the law or tenancy agreement allows. In the latter example, that usually means a brief period of sprucing up the place before returning it to market at a much higher rent.

Welcome to the world of fixed term rentals.

Photo: Getty Images

I’d say my flatting credentials in Auckland are typical, if there is such a thing. I’ve lived mainly on the tightrope of inner/outer-ring suburbs, developing an almost homing-pigeon-like sense of direction around the isthmus. I’ve lived in average-sized rooms in average-priced flats. Nothing high-end; less rainfall showers, more water pressure lotteries and being careful not to mistake the Exit Mould for shampoo.

That was until I moved in with my partner in 2020. We’re were edging further into our 30s, and shared the lofty ambition of being able to choose what to watch on our TV without an intense democratic process. As the lockdowns ramped up, we were grateful to share a refuge from the world during those uncertain times. So in an email to our property manager regarding some routine maintenance, and with our fixed term expiry still some months away, we asked if it was possible to renew our tenancy and stay on.

The reply was a one-line email, stating simply that the landlord had decided to sell up so unfortunately our tenancy would not be renewed at the end of the fixed term. Despite the empathy conveyed via the sad face emoji deployed at the end of that single line, we were pretty devastated – and frustrated that we’d only been told we’d be turfed out in a reply to an email about a broken hob.

Of course I understand the 12-month fixed term was the originally agreed tenancy, and that this is a very common starting contract as landlords size their tenants up. But we were reliable, took great care of their investment and always paid the rent on time, and naively hoped this might mean the fixed term would transform into some longer-lasting security.

What followed was a period of anxiety as we lived in, worked in and simultaneously started to pack up a house that we would now be living in for an indeterminate amount of time. We couldn’t even work to a moving date as the lockdown dragged on.

Every time a fixed term comes to an end with no prospect of staying on, it results in yet another move that is not only time-consuming, stressful and disruptive, but also a major drain on savings meant for that ever-intangible first house deposit.

I don’t really want to think about what I’ve spent on moving companies alone over the past decade – I’m now at an age where my one mate with a ute isn’t super buzzed about exchanging a day of manual labour for a few slices of pizza. That’s in addition to being forced to top up rental deposits raided for scuff marks that were definitely there when I moved in.

The government had the plight of fixed term tenants in mind when it amended the Residential Tenancies Act two years ago. One of the amendment’s key aims was to provide more security of rental tenure for both parties, and also included the admirable clause that tenants experiencing family violence will be able to withdraw from a tenancy without financial penalty.

In theory, the law now means that all fixed term tenancies will automatically roll over to a periodic tenancy, and landlords can no longer give a ‘no cause’ notice for tenants to move out.

But in practice, the usual exit clauses for landlords selling up, moving family members in, or renovating all remain. The measures the government have put in place will never fully prevent tenants having to move on when landlords request it. While rent increases are legally limited to only once every 12 months, there is no cap on the amount by which they can increase. Often it makes more financial sense for a landlord to end a tenancy for refurbishment and have the property vacant at the end of a fixed term, before relisting it for a clean start at a higher rent.

Of course, landlords are affected by changing circumstances too. My longest tenancy to date (only two and a half years) was a flat off Dominion Road that was warm, dry, secure and comfortable. The landlord was great, friendly and hands-off until you needed him to be hands-on. We had a good thing going, but ultimately when his daughter called time on her OE we had to make way for her to move in. Understandably, no amount of paying the rent on time and running dehumidifiers to battle mould will sway your landlord when their own flesh-and-blood needs a roof over their head.

So although it sounds obvious, and hopefully not too entitled, it’s worth restating that ultimately tenants will never entirely be immune to a tenancy coming to an abrupt end and their search for a home beginning anew. And with that comes a raft of impacts on day-to-day life and forward planning. Are we going to dip into our savings to move again this year? Can we plan to be out of town in the months around our renewal date?

As I write this now, we’re once again desperately close to the end of yet another fixed term tenancy. Despite asking several times, and signalling we’re hoping to stay on, the property manager has still not heard back from the landlord as to whether we will be be allowed to keep living in our home.

So once again we don’t know whether we should plan to be right where we are in six weeks’ time, or instead be spending our weekends packing and our lunch breaks scouring property listings.

Rental insecurity is psychologically agonising and emotionally exhausting. It’s also made a far bigger dent in our savings than the odd avocado on toast ever could.

Rent Week 2022 runs from September 27 to October 2. Read the best of our renting coverage here.

 

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