Four Years Later, Rowshan Kiani Keeps Iran Protest Alive in Denver

Her name was Maryam, and she was one of the first Iranian women to die after the Islamic revolution, but she is far from the last.

Almost 47 years and 7,000 miles away, Maryam's brother has not forgotten. Rowshan Kiani has spent almost every weekend for the past four years in Denver at the corner of Lincoln Street and 14th Avenue, displaying signs that call for freedom and safety for the women of his homeland and engaging passers-by. Nowadays, the 75-year-old is engaging other protesters who converge upon the Capitol, telling them about the history and current political landscape of his home country.

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ascended to power in 1941 and collaborated with the CIA to overthrow of Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 — an operation fundamentally driven by Western interests in Iran's oil resources. Swiss-educated and Western-oriented, Pahlavi pursued modernization policies that alienated conservative religious factions, culminating in the 1979 revolution that forced his exile. Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile to establish a theocratic government.

Khomeini's administration implemented strict Islamic governance. Following the revolution, the minimum marriage age for girls was lowered from eighteen to nine years old. Divorce rights were restricted to only men, for whom polygamy was reinstated. Wearing the hijab became a legal requirement for women, with up to sixty lashes doled out to those who violated the law.

"I don't consider it a revolution," Kiani says. "I consider it an Islamic coup. Maryam was a teacher. After the Ayatollah grabbed power, fifty to 100,000 Iranian women came out to demonstrate against the hijab, the chador. They captured her in that demonstration, and she spent a little over a year as a political prisoner. They tried indoctrinating her, she didn't obey. Then they executed her. After they killed all those prisoners, they brought the corpses to their families' residences. They asked for the price of the bullet they used [to kill] your sister, your brother...anybody."
Kiani had come to Denver to study electrical engineering just months before Khomeini seized power. He has never been able return home. Four decades later, retired, he felt it was time to act. Printing posters and flyers, he settled in to the corner by the Capitol every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in July of 2021, talking to people about the need for secularism, for freedom, for peace in Iran. Since then, he's missed only a few days, when weather was particularly brutal.

It would not be long before another woman's death captured the world's attention. In September 2022, 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini was arrested and beaten to death by Iran's morality police for not "properly" wearing her hijab. In the wake of massive protests, more than 500 people were killed and over 20,000 detained.

"Be a voice for those who have none! Support our sisters, daughters and mothers in Iran," his flyers plead. Kiani includes contact information for the White House, our senators, and members of the Foreign Relations Committee, and urges sanctions against his home country for its treatment of women.

What he does not want is more war. Amidst the rainbow-clad kids celebrating Pride in June, as American bombs were dropped on Iran, Kiani called for peace. "I'm against the war," he says. "I'm pro-education."

Kiani often engages interested passers-by in conversation during his lone protests.

"Some people yell 'Fuck Iran.' But most of the people I talk to are positive. And I explain that if they come for my family, they will come for yours," he says.

The aftermath of June's intense conflict between Israel and Iran and the three bomb strikes by the United States against Iranian nuclear targets is a tenuous ceasefire, with bluster on all sides. But one thing continues to escalate: More than half a million Afghan refugees (including many women and girls) have been forced out of Iran and back into Taliban control since the June hostilities began.
When he's not protesting the regime and advocating for peace, the Kiani goes to physical therapy to heal injuries from an auto accident and tends to the "almost twenty" cats who live in his suburban yard. According to Kiani, one brother is in Canada with a family, and the other is "under probation" in Iran.

"I can't call him," says Kiani. "It would be dangerous for him."

Still, every week, he sits with his signs, hoping the future here and at home will be brighter.

"We're living in bad times," he says. "But educate the people. And if every capital has a million people in front of them, we're going to save the United States. We're going to save the Constitution. Educate the people. Woman. Life. Freedom."

Kiani can be found at 14th and Lincoln almost every Friday through Sunday, from 9 am to 5 pm.