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Since mid-September, images of Iranian students and schoolgirls protesting across Iran have flooded social media.

The unrest started following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, who died in custody on 16 September, after being detained in Tehran by the morality police for allegedly not covering her hair properly.

At least 201 people have been killed since the nationwide protests erupted, among them, 28 children, according to the Tehran-based Association for the Protection of Children. The largest number of deaths occurred in the provinces of Sistan and Baluchistan.

These protests, led by young women, are unusual, but will they make history? We have spoken with Iranian scholars, protesters inside Iran and Iranian activists in the diaspora who have told us how they are experiencing it.

We speak to:


Hamze Ghalebi, Iranian analyst and former adviser to Reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi who led mass protests in 2009. 
Elnaz Sarbar, an Iranian-American women’s right activist.
Ramyar Hassani, spokeperson for Hengaw Organization for Human Rights
Maral and Negin, Iranian protesters based in Yerevan.
An anonymous student based in Shiraz, Iran.

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On this special episode of the Outriders podcast, we have travelled across two Armenian towns, Sotk and Jermuk, targeted by Azerbaijani forces during the recent escalation of the long-running conflict between both South Caucasus countries on the nights of September 12th and 13th.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been engaged in a dispute over the territory of Nagorno Karabakh for decades. Ethnically Armenian but geographically located within Azerbaijan, both countries have disputed the enclave since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The long-running conflict has seen two significant outbreaks of war - the first took place from late 1991 to 1994, and the second occurred for six weeks in the fall of 2020, when the world was still in lockdown due to the pandemic.

This recent round of violence has resulted in over 2,500 temporarily displaced civilians and over 200 killed soldiers, and is the bloodiest in the region since the 2020 war.

"Look what a happy birthday Azerbaijan sent me," says Valery Poghosyan, 60, a truck driver, pointing to a large hole on the wall of his living room in Sotk. The day that this interview took place, just three days after the escalation of the conflict, was his 60th birthday.

Like many others in this town, his family are ethnic Armenians who fled Azerbaijan in the early 90s during the first war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh. Many ethnic Armenians fled Azerbaijan and came to live here, and Azeris living here fled to Azerbaijan.

The podcast includes an analysis of the geopolitical background and social consequences with interviews with Zara Amatuni, the spokesperson of the Armenia delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross; Richard Giragosian, founder of the Regional Studies Centre, an independent geopolitical think tank based in Yerevan and Olesya Vartanyan,  Senior South Caucasus Analyst at Crisis Group.

"It is frustrating that people don't pay attention to the fact that these are not just territories," says Olesya Vartanyan. "In the maps, it looks like just territories with some shapes, mountains, lakes, but we are places where people live."

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March 5th, 2022. Irpin, another day of the Russian attack on the city. At 3:39 PM, the parents of 10-year-old Kristina reach the destroyed bridge. It was blown up by the Ukrainian army to stop the passage of Russian armored columns. But the bridge is also the passage inside the city where many civilians remain. Harder fights continue inside, but Stella and her husband have to return for their daughter. The army initially won't let them go - it's too dangerous and the missiles only fall closer. Parents do not quit - the full path of their escape is recorded by Outriders reporter who accompanied the family.

The most important parts of the three-hour path in the shelled city are given to you in the 8th episode of the Outriders podcast. 

See also the visual version of the report

https://outride.rs/en/irpin/

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It is December 30th, 2019. We continue being inside Al-Hol Camp, in eastern Syria, near the border with Iraq, where about 70,000 relatives of ISIS militants, most of them women and children, are held in detention. We met two British women. They wear black niqabs and gloves, like the rest of women. They are only 21 and 25 years old.

It is December 30th, 2019. We are at Al-Hol refugee camp in eastern Syria, in a desert area near the border with Iraq. All these women share a past and an uncertain future. And they are some of the 70,000 relatives of ISIS militants, most of them women and children, who are held in detention in Al-hol camp.   In the bakery, there is a French woman, Leila, who explains that she is the widow of a well-known French ISIS fighter who was killed.

It is December 28th, 2019. We are inside al-Hasakah prison in northeast Syria. There are hundreds of men here from several countries suspected of being affiliated with the terrorist organisation Islamic State (ISIS).