Protests throughout the year demonstrated the strongest pushback against oppressive regimes in decades.
Tensions in China, Iran, and Russia erupted at various points throughout 2022, bringing protesters to their breaking point due to war, COVID-19, or the simple denial of basic civil rights.
The protests also reached the West with greater visibility than ever before, giving protesters a platform to spread their message and make clear to the world why they wanted change.
The most visible elements of some protests have died down, but the people of these nations continue to express their discontent, marking a sea change in their political landscapes and leading to an uncertain future as governments seek to regain loyalty and control. that they may have lost. of them forever.
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IRAN
No protest rocked the world more this year than calls for change in Iran, which have lasted for more than 100 days after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The morality police accused Amini of failing to comply with the country’s hijab laws, detained her and then rushed her to hospital an hour later.
The police claimed that Amini simply fell into a coma, but her family claimed that they saw clear evidence that she had been beaten.
His death started what ended up being the biggest setback against the ayatollah’s regime. Videos and photos of the protests regularly reached the West, appearing on social networking sites such as Twitter.
The protests also began just before the 2022 United Nations High-Level Week, during which leaders from various nations travel to the UN headquarters in New York City to address the General Assembly.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was invited to speak and his arrival sparked great controversy, with many calling on President Biden to reject his visa application and prevent him from entering the country. Raisi spoke, and the leader positioned Iran as a victim of Western abuses.
A police motorcycle is burned during a protest over the death of a young woman who had been detained for violating the country’s conservative dress code in central Tehran, Iran.
(AP Photo)
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An exhibit across the street from the UN headquarters showed 2,000 of some 30,000 victims who died during the 1989 Iran death commissions, in which Raisi allegedly participated and played a leading role.
Celebrities in Iran joined the protests, including several soccer players who faced punishment for their vocal support.
Authorities sentenced Amir Nasr-Azadani to death for an alleged connection to the murder of a police colonel and two volunteer militiamen, according to Iran Wire.
The protests eventually spread to more than 140 cities and towns across Iran, with reports saying up to 500 people have been killed in a crackdown by security forces and tens of thousands arrested. Several children have also been killed during the protests as the regime struggled to contain them.
“Iranians have shown themselves and the world that they are willing to risk their lives to obtain the most basic freedoms,” Lisa Daftari, a Middle East expert and editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk, told Fox News. Digital. “For 43 years, this regime has repressed its people and denied them the most basic human rights.
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“They hope that the rest of the world will also support their movement,” Daftari continued. “More than anything, Iranian protesters and their supporters around the world hope that in 2023 there will be more awareness and, more importantly, more public support for their movement.
“When you connect the dots, it’s unfathomable why a movement for freedom, led by women, doesn’t have broader support globally. It’s about human rights, freedom and global security.”
CHINA
Following a fire at a high-rise apartment building in Xinjiang, citizens demanded accountability and an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s “zero-COVID” policy, which saw local governments lock down entire cities and order widespread lockdowns and testing. after detecting only a few. COVID-19 cases.
The fire killed 10 people, with many blaming quarantine protocols for making it difficult for residents to escape the building. The resulting anger spilled into the streets in the biggest and most direct pushback against Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher at the watchdog group Human Rights Watch, told Fox News Digital that the protests occurred because of the incident, but evidenced the pent-up anger and frustration the Chinese people had toward their government.
“People were very, very frustrated that three years had passed,” Wang said. “Under the previous lockdowns, many people were denied access to health care, emergency medical care, and some even died because of it… they were unable to make it to the hospital due to COVID restrictions.
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“Other people couldn’t get food [or] health care, because if everyone has to get food from the delivery app, of course you are overwhelmed [by] all this…and of course people were out of work for months. They couldn’t even afford to buy food anymore,” Wang explained. “So, I think just three years of pent up anger and frustration, then it was sparked by the fire, and everyone felt it.”
The sheer volume of social media accounts documenting the protests overwhelmed China’s censors and algorithms, breaking China’s famous “Great Firewall” to reach Twitter and other Western platforms. The task proved so difficult that China reportedly spammed Twitter with posts about pornography and escorts to make it harder for users to find protest videos when searching for cities by name.
Chinese citizens turned to virtual private networks (VPNs) to hide their locations and allow them access to Western social media, demonstrating the increased sophistication that protesters have developed.
Chinese media saw the beginning of the “blank page protest”, in which the user would post an image of a blank page and tag the post with keywords that would otherwise evade censors such as “fine”, “yes” and “correct” to convey the sentiment that citizens are “voiceless but also powerful,” according to The New York Times.
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The protests achieved their goal and led Beijing to go back to “zero-COVID,” but the abrupt change led to a severe increase in COVID-19 subvariants. More than 250 million people in China may have had an infection by Christmas, prompting some nations to start implementing travel restrictions again as China sought to open its borders.
RUSSIA
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine proved unpopular when it began with protests that spread from Moscow to Khabarovsk, a city about 4,000 miles east of the capital. One watchdog estimate puts the number of arrests at just over 19,000, with around 400 convicted in “anti-war criminal cases.”
Two weeks after the start of the war, live news personalities in Russia began protesting. Regulators in Russia accused Dozhd, or TV Rain, of “inciting extremism, abusing Russian citizens, massively disturbing public peace and security and encouraging protests,” according to the BBC.
Marina Ovsyannikova interrupts a live news bulletin on Russian state TV “Channel One” holding a sign reading “NO WAR. Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. You are being lied to here.” at an unknown location in Russia on March 14, 2022, in this still image obtained from a video upload.
(Channel One/via REUTERS)
Putin quickly signed into law a law allowing authorities to jail journalists for up to 15 years for reporting “false” news about the army and the invasion, with officials refusing to call it a “war” or “invasion.” Instead, they referred to the “special operation.”
People also attacked military recruiting stations, setting them on fire with Molotov cocktail attacks. The attacks began again after Putin ordered a “partial mobilization” to help bolster the dwindling number of his forces.
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The recruiting effort again showed how unhappy the people were with the war, as significant numbers of men fled the country rather than risk being sent to the front lines.
When the police cracked down on the protests, the most visible elements faded, but the people became more creative. Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, told Fox News Digital that the protests have transformed as Russian authorities have stepped up the severity of their response.
“I think to understand the way that the Russians are expressing their objection to the war and the mobilization, I think you have to take a much broader perspective than the street protests,” Denber said.
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“They find ways to support people who are trying to evade conscription,” he explained. “Sometimes they get involved in actions by one person on the street, which I assume is a form of street protest and for which, you know, they face administrative or criminal charges.”
