Videos are said to show Iranian women cutting off their long dark locks in protest. Some shave their heads. Others set the hijab on fire and share videos of it on social media. In Tehran, protesters shout “death to the regime”. The protests against the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini have spread to several cities in Iran. Demonstrations have broken out against Iran’s morality police after Amini’s death. On Friday, the 22-year-old died in a hospital in the capital, Tehran. Three days earlier, she was stopped on the street by Iran’s morality police. Reason: She must have worn the hijab the wrong way. “An unfortunate incident” Mihsa Amini in the hospital in Tehran before she died. The 22-year-old was visiting Tehran with her brother when she was arrested by the morality police, according to several news agencies. Eyewitnesses have said that she screamed and was beaten before being forced into a police car. A video from the police station shows Amini signing on. Then the video is cut. Tehran police chief Hossein Rahimi says Amini died of cardiac arrest. He calls the death “an unfortunate event”. – The evidence shows that there was no inappropriate behavior on the part of the police, he said. Iranian authorities now say that the matter will be investigated. The front page of Iranian newspapers on Sunday 18 September. Photo: WANA NEWS AGENCY / Reuters It has not helped the anger and sadness of many Iranians. Dangerous protests It is illegal and dangerous to protest against the authoritarian regime in Iran. Still, Mahsa Amini’s death has sent thousands of people to the streets, according to the AFP news agency. Her official name is Masha Amini, while her parents use her Kurdish name Jina. Kurds make up around 10 percent of Iran’s total population of 84 million people. Amini in an undated photo taken from social media. Photo: IRANWIRE / Reuters It was in the Kurdish parts of Iran that the protests started. They have now spread to cities all over the country, says Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam. He heads the organization Human Rights Iran, and is professor of medicine at the University of Oslo. He is working to get an overview of the protests, and says he has received reports of four people killed so far. The governor of the Kurdistan province, Ismail Zarei Koosha, claims, according to the news agency Fars, that three people have been killed, but does not specify when this should have happened. The mayor of Tehran tells the state news agency IRNA that citizens of three countries outside Iran have been arrested during the protests in the capital. A powerful symbol – What happened to Mahsa and the way it happened has awakened something in Iran. That was the final straw. People are tired of being held down, says Amiry-Moghaddam to news. That women burn the hijab is symbolic, he says. Iran’s supreme religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini introduced hijab orders for women in 1979. Photo: AP Iran’s Islamic regime introduced hijab orders in 1979. – The hijab has become a symbol of Iran’s Islamic regime. When women burn the hijab, they burn the symbol of the Iranian regime. It is strong and it is dangerous for those who do it, says Amiry-Moghaddam to news. He says all women in Iran can identify with the treatment 22-year-old Mahsa Amini received: Everyone has been stopped themselves or knows someone who has faced the long arm of the morality police. At the same time, Iran’s economy is under pressure and many Iranians are struggling to make ends meet. – While Iranians suffer economically, the regime spends money on the nuclear program and militias in the region. There is enormous anger in the population, says Amiry-Moghaddam. USA: Must be held accountable It was Tuesday last week that Mahsa Amina was arrested after taking the subway in Tehran. On Friday 16 September, she died in hospital. The front page of Iranian newspapers on Sunday 18 September. Photo: WANA NEWS AGENCY / Reuters The 22-year-old’s funeral in his home town of Saqqes developed into large protests against the regime. They are still ongoing. Storting President Masud Gharahkhani writes on his Facebook page that he is uncomfortable with the way the Iranian regime is behaving. “She was taken by the morality police in the streets of Tehran because the ayatollah regime will decide how women should dress. I get sick and pissed off. Hope the Iranian people will one day be freed from these extremists,” writes Gharahkhani. The spokesperson in the White House in the United States says those responsible for Amini’s death must be held accountable. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam says the frustration is great in the Iranian people. – People just want to live normally. Go to school, work and dress as they want, and have basic rights, he says. He hopes the world reacts strongly to what is happening in Iran now. A woman in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya sets fire to a hijab in protest against the death of Mihsa Amini. Photo: SHWAN MOHAMMED / AFP Norway: Condemns gross violence Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt (Ap) writes in an e-mail that she “condemns gross and unnecessary violence by police authorities anywhere in the world”. – The way the Iranian authorities enforce the hijab mandate appears oppressive to women and is something I strongly distance myself from. She writes that she will raise the matter with the Iranian authorities and the UN. Huitfeldt adds that it must be safe to demonstrate in Iran. – It is important that the Iranian people now have the opportunity to express themselves and show their heartfelt reactions in protests. This sends a strong signal to Iran’s authorities that the hijab order and its current enforcement is something that many Iranians experience as a gross assault on individual freedom.
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