It began with a trip to Tehran. Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman from north-west Iran, was visiting family in the capital with her brother in September when she was detained by the country’s notorious morality police. The “guidance patrol” reportedly arrested Amini for violating Iran’s strict hijab law, which requires all women to cover their hair. Eyewitnesses reported that police beat Amini with batons; she spent three days in a coma, before dying in a hospital on 16 September. Authorities told her family that she had suffered from sudden heart failure; her family insists that she’d been in good health.
As news of Amini’s death spread across Iran, protests and violent demonstrations soon followed in dozens of towns and cities. Her death has catalysed months of frustrations with Iran’s repressive regime, particularly for women, who are routinely harassed and abused by police tasked with enforcing modest dress. Footage shows Iranian women marching, chanting and ripping off their headscarves, before tossing them on to bonfires in the street. In many of the clips shared online, chants of, “Death to the dictator!” – in reference to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei – can be heard; other videos show violent confrontations with security forces, with Iranians hurling objects and petrol bombs at police.
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