New Protests in Iran Over Death of Woman Arrested by Morality Police

As President Raisi hardens his policies, internal criticism of the government rises

Protests in Iran continued on Sunday after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian, who was arrested for not wearing her headscarf properly.

Amini was detained in Tehran on Tuesday by Iran’s Guidance Patrol for allegedly not wearing her hijab correctly while on a trip to the capital to visit her family and later was taken to an “education and advice center.” She was taken from the center to a Tehran hospital in a coma.

The Guidance Patrol, also known as the morality police, is a body created by the Iranian government in 2005 to enforce the regime’s rules for dress and the code of conduct in public. Today, it is mostly focused on enforcing the “correct” manner of wearing the hijab for Iranian women.

Hours after the arrest, Amini’s family learned that she was in a coma which she did not wake up from before she died on Friday.

Iranian state television reported on Friday: “Unfortunately, she died, and her body was transferred to the medical examiner’s office.” The report added that the police declared that Amini “suddenly suffered a heart problem while in the company of others receiving guidance [and then] was immediately taken to hospital with the cooperation of the emergency services.”

However, Amini’s family claims that she did not suffer from any health conditions, and women who had been previously arrested by the morality police said that she might have been beaten.

The so-called morality police in Tehran arbitrarily arrested her three days before her death while enforcing the country’s abusive, degrading, and discriminatory forced veiling laws. All agents and officials responsible must face justice.

“The circumstances leading to the suspicious death in custody of 22-year-old young woman Mahsa Amini, which include allegations of torture and other ill-treatment in custody, must be criminally investigated,” the human rights organization Amnesty International said in a statement.

“The so-called morality police in Tehran arbitrarily arrested her three days before her death while enforcing the country’s abusive, degrading, and discriminatory forced veiling laws. All agents and officials responsible must face justice,” the statement also said.

The announcement of Amini’s death sparked protests in Tehran and in her home city, Saqez, located west of Tehran in the Kurdistan region.

In Saqez, hundreds of women took off their hijabs in the streets and chanted slogans such as “Death to the dictator.” In addition to the protests, the incident has drawn the condemnation of many Iranian celebrities and other Iranian nationals on social media.

This has made people understand women’s problems more, and the issue of hijab has become a public issue, not just a problem related to Iranian women. Men are also protesting in this situation.

Roza Mohammadi, a pseudonym for an Iranian academic living in Tehran, told The Media Line that since President Ebrahim Raisi rose to power, the morality police has started to strengthen its surveillance and become harsher.

The morality police have changed under Raisi, according to the academic. “Their performance and supervision have increased greatly during his presidency and their actions are becoming more violent day by day,” she said.

“Currently, people are upset, disappointed, and angry about the tragedy that has happened to Mahsa,” she added, stressing that this incident has highlighted the hijab issue and encouraged more men to be interested in it.

“This has made people understand women’s problems more, and the issue of hijab has become a public issue, not just a problem related to Iranian women. Men are also protesting in this situation,” she said.

The intensity and frequency of the protests and the implicit changes within society indicate the strong pressure from the public, especially young Iranians, to break the restrictions

Nadeem Ahmed Moonakal, a research scholar focusing on the emerging geopolitics of the Middle East in the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations at Manipal University, told The Media Line that during the last year the Iranian government’s crackdown on protests and public demonstrations has increased.

Raisi has described the recent protests as “moral corruption,” which Moonakal says is a reaction to the restrictions posed in Iran after the 1979 revolution.

He noted that the Iranian government also has been organizing rallies to promote hijab in the country, and “the Raisi government has justified the government’s harsh response by citing foreign involvement and conspiracy, a reason often cited to crackdown on grassroots-level protests in the country.”

Moonakal adds that the protests in the wake of Amini’s death are also about the long-unresolved issues that Iranian society has been protesting about for the last few years, such as human rights abuses, economic crisis, mismanagement, and alleged corruption.

“The intensity and frequency of the protests and the implicit changes within society indicate the strong pressure from the public, especially young Iranians, to break the restrictions,” he said.

Iranians are preparing to go on strikes and join nationwide protests in response to Mahsa’s killing

Alireza Nader, an Iran scholar based in Washington, DC, also believes Amini’s death has led to further protests.

“The murder of Mahsa Amini has mobilized the public to continue mass protests which began in 2017,” he told The Media Line, explaining that there have been several major uprisings against the regime, “including the 2019 Aban uprising which was brutally crushed by the dictator (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei.”

Nader claims, “Iranians are preparing to go on strikes and join nationwide protests in response to Mahsa’s killing.”

Milad Ahmedi, an Iranian Kurdish human rights activist living in Denmark, told The Media Line that the rise in the number of protests has been facilitated in part by social media platforms.

“The rise in the number of protests, has a clear connection with the development of social media. Social media has made people more connected across cities, municipalities, and regions,” he said.

Esfahani, a pseudonym for an Iranian woman who works as an assistant professor of politics and lives in the United Kingdom, says that by monitoring the matter through her contacts in Iran, and on social media, she “can confirm a deep sense of sadness mixed with anger and resentment, particularly toward the morality police and the whole concept of compulsory hijab.”

She says that even some of the Islamic Republic supporters are upset about what happened and are critical of the policies and treatment of young people.