Students and scholars — from Tehran to Los Angeles — want justice after Mahsa Amini’s death (The 19th)
Image courtesy of Rena Li and The 19th.
A 22-year-old Iranian woman was arrested for an alleged hijab violation. Three days later, she was dead – spurring the academic community in and outside the Islamic Republic to take action.
By Nadra Nittle, The 19th, October 5, 2022
Nasrin Rahimieh is astounded by the images coming out of her native Iran.
Women have taken to the streets to burn their hijabs, expose their flowing hair and shave their heads. They’ve sung and shouted, twirled and danced — misdeeds in an Islamic republic that rigidly controls how women dress and behave.
Viewing the footage, “I genuinely just have chills down my spine because I think they know they’re facing death,” said Rahimieh, author and editor of multiple books about Iran and a humanities professor at the University of California, Irvine.
These public acts of defiance follow the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman visiting Iran’s capital city of Tehran from Kurdistan Province before starting university. On September 13, Amini was arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly wearing her head covering too loosely, a dress code violation. Three days later, Amini was dead. Although the authorities said the young woman, known to her loved ones as “Jina,” died of a heart attack, her family has denied that she had preexisting health conditions. They maintain that police brutality, specifically blows to the head, caused her demise.