[The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, while in the custody of
Iranian morals police, has sparked a new wave of street demands for
democracy. Iranian rulers are targeting the population they are most
scared of: Women.]
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MAHSA, A NATIONAL IRANIAN SYMBOL OF RESISTANCE  
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Faribia Amini
September 23, 2022
Informed Comment
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_ The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, while in the custody of
Iranian morals police, has sparked a new wave of street demands for
democracy. Iranian rulers are targeting the population they are most
scared of: Women. _

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Newark, Del. (Special to Informed Comment) – In the summer of 1993,
I went to Iran to visit my parents who at the time were living in
Tehran on and off. We had left Iran six months after the Iranian
Revolution of 1979 and I had not returned until 1993.

I remember the atmosphere at the time, which was quite gloomy. The
hejab of course had already been put in place and one could not wear
anything other than dark colors.

As a young woman, I was not in the habit of putting any make-up on (I
still don’t), but sometimes I would put a lipstick on. My mother and
a male cousin decided to take me to the rug exhibition, which was held
in a large, confined area in Tehran. It was a huge exhibition
depicting the art of rug making and showing off an enormous rug
destined for one of the emirs of the Persian Gulf, the largest one
ever made.

As we were walking inside this large compound, a white van approached
and stopped. Three women and a man came out. They came toward us and
told my mother, tell your daughter to lower her scarf for it is not
covering all of her hair, and to wipe her lipstick off. My head cover
was a colorful silk scarf and I presume that is what drew their
attention. My mother replied by telling them, my daughter doesn’t
even wear any make-up and her head is covered, but they insisted.
Finally, they left but I, as a young woman, was shaken by this
encounter. On that same trip while leaving to return to the U.S., I
had to go through the female security line, and, again, one of the
“sisters” as they are called, said to me, you have too much
lipstick on. Take it off. I obeyed. I was scared and I just wanted to
leave Tehran as soon as possible.

On a different occasion during the same trip, my two female cousins
and my young daughter and I went to the mountains. It is customary for
Tehranis to go on such outings; the mountain range is very close and
on clear days, you can see the beautiful snow-capped peaks from
anywhere in Tehran. Depending on how strong and athletic you are, you
can engage in serious climbing, but we had just wanted to go and get
some fresh air and on the way stop at one of the tea houses. There I
noticed that many young girls had taken off their scarves and were
airing their hair and necks in the fresh air after a long walk up the
hills. It was the only time that I had seen women feeling free in an
outdoor setting. This freedom soon ended after newspaper reports began
to speak of girls and boys getting together up the mountains, mingling
and playing music.

By doing so, these young people had committed a most horrible sin
according to the officials.

On that same trip, while having lunch at my parents’ house, one of
our relatives showed up. He was shaking telling a scene he had
witnessed in Meydan Tajrish, a central square in northern Tehran. He
told us how shocked he had been watching a young woman enter a
telephone booth. A young _pasdar_ (revolutionary guard) had asked
her to get out and she had refused and told him to go to hell. He drew
his weapon and shot at her right there. Our relative was not sure
whether the girl had survived, but no one dared to do anything. The
revolutionary guards had all the power and all the weapons. They ruled
Tehran.

Many equally dramatic and distressing scenes of violence against women
have been recorded.

In 2003, Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian Canadian photographer, was taken in
by security forces while taking photos of Evin Prison. She had been
also hit on her head by a prison guard. She later died of hemorrhage.

A military staff physician who used his knowledge of Kazemi’s case
for seeking asylum in Canada in 2004, stated later that he examined
Kazemi’s body and observed that Kazemi showed obvious signs of
torture, including a skull fracture, broken nose, signs of rape and
severe abdominal bruising.

In 2011, Haleh Sahabi, the daughter of the late religious/nationalist
leader, Ezatollah Sahabi, after having been granted a leave from
prison for her father’s funeral, died at his burial site. It was
claimed that she had cardiac arrest but Ahmad Montazeri , the son of
the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, said that he witnessed a guard hitting
her so hard that she fell down.

And now the world has witnessed the beating and murder of a young,
22-year-old Kurdish woman who, terribly scared had reacted by
screaming why she was being taken away. When her 17-year-old brother
had objected, he had been beaten as well. She and other women were
surrounded by the same “sisters” at one of Tehran’s metro
stations. She was tall, beautiful and had an angelic face.

_Mahsa Amini. H/t Lunapic [[link removed]]_

At the time of the confrontation, Mahsa Zhina as she was called at
home, had a long black robe with her dark scarf covering almost her
entire hair. She did have red nail polish on. Perhaps the fact that
she was a beautiful young woman drew the attention of the morality
police or perhaps this was because of harsher measures introduced
since Ebrahim Raisi had become President of Iran— an ex-guard in the
infamous Evin prison who has been accused of ordering the murder of
more than 4000 political prisoners.

Whatever the reason, Mahsa was hit hard on her head, causing her to
fall and when she came to, the head of the interrogation room, a
hardline Pasdar Colonel, hearing her screams, pushed her to the ground
and hit her even harder on the head, until two women(sisters) noticed
that she was not moving, and blood was coming out of her ear. The
colonel who was about to leave for Iraq, for Arbain (the ceremony
remembering Imam Hussein’s martyrdom some 1400 years ago) called her
a bad-kareh, which means a whore.

The circumstances in which all this happened remain murky, but the
father of Mahsa Amini told the press that his daughter had no previous
ailments. She was healthy and she had come to Tehran to have some fun
with her brother and cousin.

She ended up in the ICU section of the hospital and died two days
later. No autopsy was done and lies upon lies came out of the mouth of
government officials who have always denied their role in any crime.

Mahsa Amini was buried in her hometown of Saqqez, a city in the
Kurdish region of Iran. A note was written next to the roses left on
her burial place in the Kurdish language, which read, “Dear Zhina,
you will not die, your name shall become a symbol.”

Violence against women, and especially young women began soon after
some 43 years ago when Khomeini announced that the mandatory hejab
would be among the laws implemented in the newly formed Islamic
Republic. Thousands of women reacted by demonstrating against this
mandatory rule, yet no one thought this would become the law of the
land until it did. Yes, indeed the hair of women must be covered just
as their bodies should be covered in dark long robes. Later, during
various administrations, _gasht ershad_ or the morality police was
visible, to a lesser degree. Women were now wearing tighter clothes,
showing off their bleached hair and even having plastic surgery to
show their nose jobs, their full botox-treated lips and wide colored
eyebrows.

But violence against women never stopped. And women have never stopped
fighting back. Iranian women have stood up to these injustices by
either showing off more of their hair or by expressing their
views-always finding ways to confront the male-dominated rulers of the
Islamic Republic. So many have faced arrest, torture and imprisonment.

So many unknown and known names come mind.

The Taliban of Iran are now in full force targeting the population
they are most scared of: Women. Headed by the criminal Raisi, the
regime’s institutions have become emboldened. And now they are even
monitoring people by newly bought Chinese-made sophisticated
technology.

But the death of Mahsa, like that of Neda before her (shot during the
Green Movement), shows that the Iranian population in general and
women in particular have had enough. Even if more oppressive measures
are taken which will most likely happen, an entire nation is up in
arms against the Islamic Republic.

While I was waiting to interview a famous American journalist at the
Watergate hotel some years ago, a group of Iranian men were in the
lobby, presumably to negotiate the nuclear issue with American
officials. I knew what I was doing when I offered my hand to be shaken
by them. They refused apologetically, one of them telling me we
respect you but can’t shake your hands!

They respected neither me nor women. For them, shaking the hand of
women is sinful, just as women showing their hair is sinful; all while
the regime commits unspeakable sins by any religious standard.

The Quran and the Hadith demands female modesty but neither command
women to cover their hair or forbids them to shake hands with men. It
is all made-up to cover a Republic which has put to shame the concept
of human rights, women rights, or any rights.

In the hall of the United Nations, where Raisi spoke while attending
the UN general assembly, lying to the world about Iran having the best
record in social justice, the verse of Sa’di, the great Iranian poet
of the 13th century is inscribed.

_The sons of Adam are limbs of each other,
Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time affects one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
If you have no sympathy for the troubles of others,
You are unworthy to be called by the name of a Human._

The Islamic Republic, has, for forty-three years, trampled on the
words of Sa’di.

Yesterday Mahsa would have turned twenty-three.

* Iran
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* women's rights
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* democracy
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* islam
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