Iran’s Islamist rulers have begun cracking down on expressions of happiness by their opponents over President Ebrahim Raisi’s death Sunday in a helicopter crash.
Raisi and other senior officials died when their helicopter crashed in bad weather in East Azerbaijan province while flying back to Iran from a visit to the border with Azerbaijan. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared five days of national mourning in response.
Raisi was reviled by opponents of Iran's authoritarian Islamist government for his role as a prosecutor who ordered mass killings of political prisoners in 1988 and for using his presidential powers to violently suppress a women’s rights protest movement that erupted nationwide in late 2022 and continued into 2023.
Dadban, an Iran-based group of lawyers defending political prisoners and rights activists, said in a Tuesday post on the X platform that it received messages from several citizens who reported being ordered by security agencies to remove online content expressing joy at Raisi’s demise.
The head of Iran’s cyber police had warned a day earlier that authorities were “carefully monitoring cyberspace" and advised citizens to refrain from publishing “provocative” content.
The Islamic Republic’s Iranian critics inside and outside Iran have flooded social media with mockery of Raisi since his death, with some posting the Persian hashtag “helicotlet,” a combination of the words helicopter and cutlet. Many of those critics celebrated the 2020 killing of top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. missile strike in Baghdad by referring to him as a “cutlet.”
Persian social media users also posted videos appearing to show people in different parts of Iran sharing sweets and chocolates on Monday to celebrate Raisi’s death.
In one video sent to VOA Persian TV host Masih Alinejad and published by her on social media, a woman whose face is not shown carries a tray of sweet pastries in a public park in an unidentified part of Iran and offers them to another woman whom she approaches nearby.
In the ensuing brief conversation, one woman jokes about wanting to know the occasion for the pastries, while the other says they both know the occasion, in an apparent cryptic reference to Raisi’s death.
In another video posted on Telegram by a progressive student organization in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, a woman whose face also is not shown walks along a street at night, bringing a tray of sweet pastries to several bystanders who accept her celebratory offer.
VOA cannot independently verify the circumstances of the celebratory videos, as it is barred from reporting inside Iran.
The mother of a teenage boy fatally wounded by Tehran security forces in September 2022 as he joined nationwide protests expressed her defiance of the late Raisi more openly.
In a video message posted to Instagram on Monday, Abolfazl Amir Ataei’s mother, Maryam, said Raisi’s death is a “result of the groans of myself and other mothers whose children you killed.”
Dadban said Iranian security officers also took punitive action against political prisoners who rejoiced over Raisi’s death in ward 15 of the city of Karaj’s central penitentiary, transferring them to an unknown location.
Iran-based journalist Manizheh Moazen said authorities also targeted her in the crackdown. Writing Tuesday on X, she said the government prosecutor’s office for culture and media has opened a new case against her because of how she reacted to Raisi’s death.
Iranian American human rights lawyer and Atlantic Council analyst Gissou Nia told VOA’s Afghan Service that the celebratory acts seen in Iran since Raisi’s death stem from his “extraordinary” unpopularity.
“He was a perpetrator of crimes against humanity and atrocity crimes in every decade of the Islamic Republic. His policies led to extreme violence on women and a nationwide outcry,” Nia said.
Iranian opponents of the Islamic Republic in the diaspora engaged in more public celebratory activities in major Western cities.
On Monday, Iranians waving pre-Islamic Republic Iranian flags danced to music outside Iranian diplomatic missions in London, Copenhagen, The Hague and Hamburg.
There were similar scenes in midtown Toronto on Monday, and in Stockholm and Frankfurt on Tuesday.
Mehrzad Zarei, a Toronto-based father who lost his son in Iran’s 2020 shootdown of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752 over Tehran, told a VOA Persian reporter that Raisi’s death in the helicopter crash was “sweet” but not what he had most wanted to see.
“Deep in my heart, I was wishing to see Iranian officials who have committed crimes — like Raisi who was known as the 'executioner of Evin [prison]' and killed many of our loved ones — being prosecuted and tried in a fair court,” Zarei said.
This report was produced in collaboration with VOA Persian Service journalists Niusha Boghrati, Behrooz Samadbeygi and Behrang Rahbari, who reported from Toronto. Zheela Noori of VOA’s Afghan Service also contributed.
