The Basij militiaman, a paramilitary storm trooper of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, was reportedly swinging an electric shock baton when the crowd of angry protesters closed in around him.

"They got a Basij, hold him!” one man shouted as the demonstrators pulled away the militiaman’s baton and knocked him to the ground in the largely Kurdish city of Kermanshah.

But rather than beat the man to death, the crowd struck a different kind of blow against Iran’s authoritarian regime: they stripped him of his trousers and sent him stumbling and humiliated into the cold night.

“The protesters wanted to show that they are peaceful but that they are not weak and they are not afraid,” said Raman Ghavami, an Iranian analyst who has been tracking the protest.

In Kermanshah and in cities and towns across Iran, emboldened and defiant protesters continued the largest demonstrations since 2009 even as security forces stepped up the violence to try to suppress them.

Protesters strip a Basij militiaman of his trousers