By Myla Shashiki-Moya, World News Editor
On September 16, a 22-year-old woman named Zhina Amini, more well known by her Iranian name Mahsa Amini, died shortly after being detained by Iran’s “morality police” in Tehran because of improper use of the hijab, the mandatory head covering that Iranian women are expected to wear.
The authorities have claimed that she possessed an underlying medical condition, which led her to have a sudden heart attack while she was under arrest.
“She suddenly lost consciousness and fell on the floor, that due to her chronological disease she could not adapt herself with the emerged conditions, and therefore, under such conditions, her heart pulse was disrupted, her blood pressure dropped, and after that she lost consciousness,” explained the statement released by Iran’s Legal Medicine Organization.
However, her family has denied these allegations, claiming that Amini was healthy. Several eyewitnesses, including other women who were detained with her, have stated that she was repeatedly beaten by the police.
“They are lying, she has not been to any hospital at all in the past 22 years, other than for a few cold-related sicknesses,” said Amjad Amini, Mahsa’s father, when interviewed by the BBC. “She never had any medical conditions, she never had surgery.”
Additionally, photographs of Amini at the hospital show that she had bruises around the eyes and ear bleeding, symptoms that are more consistent with a head injury than with a heart attack, contradicting the authority’s claims.
The anger and uproar caused by this situation have sparked a series of protests across Iran, which are being mainly led by teenage and young adult women, and with the violent response from the Basij, a militia group under Iran’s Revolutionary Corps, catching widespread attention, especially after a series of testimonies and videos showing them beating and even sexually harassing protestors surfaced on the internet.
“They gave jobs to a lot of people that mentally do not have the education to fit into the Pasdaran,” explained Dr. Marco Rimanelli, professor of political sciences and international studies at Saint Leo, about this paramilitary group. “You hear from a lot of women that they got harassed over years for any perceived indiscretions because the point is no longer whether you do it right or wrong. Any of these Basiji might tell you because they don’t have high education, that you did something wrong, and they are going to start checking on you and harassing you; it becomes a pretext.”
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), there were over 200 people killed at the protests as of October 10, with 29 percent of the victims being under the age of 18.
There seems to be a trend in recent years with younger generations of Iranians being more willing to voice counterrevolutionary opinions and protest because of an increased influence from the west due to the use of new technologies like social media and the internet.
Likewise, this is not the first instance of police brutality being directed toward the youth in Iran; a similar situation of violence was presented during the 2009 presidential elections protests.
“They beat up all the university students and high schoolers during this, and there was a major fight over internet access because they would use their phones to tell each other where to do the stuff,” said Rimanelli. “They were crushed eventually, but they showed that they were willing to protest.”
However, there is a remarkable difference between the current situation and what happened in 2009 when it comes to gender as, unlike in previous protests—which have been mostly male-dominated with women supporting them—it is women who are leading the movement.
Another important factor to consider is the fact that Amini was a Kurdish woman, which not only played a factor in the way that she was treated by the morality police, but has also now influenced the direction of the protests. Many Kurdish men decided to participate because of the undercurrent of secessionism that Amini’s identity has brought to the cause, given that the Kurds have been strongly discriminated against in the past and have been fighting for several years to gain independence from Iran.
When it comes to international reactions, the European Union has frozen the assets of the leading officials of the Basij and Iran’s Information Minister, and has banned them from traveling to Europe. The United States has also imposed economic sanctions upon the morality police, as well as senior military officers.
Nonetheless, it is unfortunately unlikely for this to make a significant change in the Iranian government’s response, as they have dealt with similar sanctions in the past, to the point where they can brush these off.
Moreover, despite the sanctions, they feel a sense of protection coming from their military alliance with Russia, as well as from the pipelines that are being built which will allow them to trade with China.
“They think they can resist any sanctions; they are repressing at home what they need to repress, and they need the support from only two places: Russia, which covers them also with Syria, and China,” said Rimanelli. “If the money and the petrol goes via Russia and China, they can survive and they can repress everybody.”
Currently, 227 members of the Parliament have requested for people arrested during the protests to receive the death penalty, with eight people having already been charged as of October 29 according to UN News.
Because of this, the best thing we can do on our behalf to contribute to this cause is to keep spreading information on the subject, to ensure that the voices and opinions of women and Iranian citizens, in general, continue to be heard.
