Protests have erupted across Iran in recent days after a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, died while being held by the “morality police” for violating the country’s strictly enforced Islamic dress code.
The death of Mahsa Amini, who had been picked up for her allegedly loose headscarf, or hijab, has triggered daring displays of defiance, in the face of beatings and possible arrest.
Iran’s morality police arrested Amini on Sept. 13 in Tehran, where she was visiting from her hometown in the country’s western Kurdish region.
She collapsed at a police station and died three days later.
Iranian women have full access to education, work outside the home and hold public office. But they are required to dress modestly in public, which includes wearing the hijab as well as long, loose-fitting robes.
Unmarried men and women are barred from mingling.
The rules, which date back to the days after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, are enforced by the morality police.
The force, officially known as the Guidance Patrol, is stationed across public areas.
It is made up of men as well as women.
The morality police detained her over wearing her hijab too loosely. Iran requires women to wear the headscarf in a way that completely covers their hair when in public.
Only Afghanistan under Taliban rule now actively enforces a similar law. Ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia has dialed back its enforcement over recent years.
Amini’s family says she had no history of heart trouble and that they were prevented from seeing her body before she was buried. The demonstrations erupted after her funeral in the Kurdish city of Saqez on Saturday, and quickly spread to other parts of the country, including Tehran.
The police deny Amini was mistreated and say she died of a heart attack.
Many Iranians, particularly the young, have come to see Amini’s death as part of the Islamic Republic’s heavy-handed policing of dissent and the morality police’s increasingly violent treatment of young women.
In street protests, some women tore off their mandatory headscarves, demonstratively twirling them in the air.
Videos online showed two women throwing their hijabs into a bonfire.
Another woman is seen cutting off her hair in a show of protest.
At some of the demonstrations, protesters clashed with police and thick clouds of tear gas were seen rising in the capital, Tehran. Protesters were also chased and beaten with clubs by the motorcycle-riding Basij.
The Basij, volunteers in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, have violently suppressed protests in the past, including over water rights and the country’s cratering economy.
At some of the demonstrations, protesters clashed with police and thick clouds of tear gas were seen rising in the capital, Tehran. Protesters were also chased and beaten with clubs by the motorcycle-riding Basij.
The Basij, volunteers in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, have violently suppressed protests in the past, including over water rights and the country’s cratering economy.
Yet some demonstrators still chant “death to the dictator,” targeting both Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s theocracy, despite the threat of arrest, imprisonment and even the possibility of a death sentence.
Iranian leaders have vowed to investigate the circumstances of Amini’s death while accusing unnamed foreign countries and exiled opposition groups of seizing on it as a pretext to foment unrest. That’s been a common pattern during protests in recent years.
Iran’s ruling clerics view the United States as a threat to the Islamic Republic and believe the adoption of Western customs undermines society. Khamenei himself has seized on so-called “color” protests in Europe and elsewhere as foreign interventions — and not as people demonstrating for more rights.
AFP