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World News | Year-end 2022: How ‘death in custody’ has women at war with Iran’s now-defunct ‘morality’ police

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Tehran [Iran], Dec. 31 (ANI): A ruthless regime known for cracking down on dissent with an iron fist has pulled all administrative levers to crush a protest by a group of women standing up for their rights and dignity. However, all it does is fan the flames.

Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who was visiting her brother in Tehran on September 13, 2022, allegedly died in custody, but the incident fell on the target of the country’s so-called morality police. She was allegedly wearing her turban (turban) loosely at the entrance of the Shahid Haghani Expressway in Tehrah, before being known locally as Gasht-e Ershad The guiding patrol was towed away.

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She was handed over to the country’s Moral Security Service guards and died three days later after allegedly falling into a coma.

The death sparked a rare outrage and civilian protests on the streets of Tehran, with citizens of all ages and genders gathering on street corners to chant death to the “morality police” who blamed them for killing the 22-year-old detainee .

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While authorities claim Amini died of heart failure, her family claims that her murder was covered up.

However, Amini suffered a heart attack after being detained by a professional police force and was immediately taken to hospital with the cooperation of the country’s emergency services, Al Jazeera reported.

Immediately after Amini’s funeral on Sept. 17 in her home Kurdistan province in northwestern Iran, civilian outrage spread to 80 cities, including Tehran.

As the protests have grown, the regime has literally unleashed cavalry and heavily armed police in a brutal crackdown on dissent.

A widely circulated video of the country’s riot police cracking down on a peaceful rally against the regime has drawn global condemnation.

According to reports, the civilian unrest triggered by Amini’s death led to many arrests and at least 17 deaths.

By then, however, the flames of protest had become a global movement, and Iran’s strict enforcement of women’s dress codes, especially the hijab, was called into question.

And, a feature of the street protests after Amini’s death saw women setting their headscarves ablaze and cutting off their hair in solidarity with one of them who refused to step down and submit to “moral” orders . ‘ Policemen.

While the ruthless way in which Iran’s “morality” police enforces the dress code is distasteful, according to media reports, they have gained global notoriety by dedicating themselves to wearing the hijab correctly and shoving morality pills down the throats of defiant, perhaps, never , after Amini.

As protests raged in the country and beyond, global human rights watchdog Amnesty International issued a statement saying that “the circumstances leading to the suspicious death in custody of a 22-year-old young woman, Mahsa Amini, included allegations of torture and other ill-treatment in custody. allegations, a criminal investigation must take place.”

A widely circulated video of female protesters chanting anti-government slogans at a rally in Amini’s hometown of Sarkozy ignited a fire that soon engulfed the country.

In September, Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad shared a video on her social media accounts of women cutting their hair in solidarity at Amini. She tagged the video with a message that read: “Iranian women express their anger by cutting their hair and burning their hijabs in protest of the killing of #Mahsa_Amini by hijab-wearing police.”

The death in custody of the 22-year-old woman, accused of violating the dress code, has also drawn attention from other world bodies including the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU).

The United Nations has called for an independent investigation into Amini’s death, Al Jazeera reported.

UN experts strongly condemned the death of the 22-year-old woman in police custody after she was arrested for allegedly wearing an “inappropriate hijab”.

The experts also condemned violence against peaceful protesters and human rights defenders and called for accountability for the killing of Amini by Iranian security forces in cities across the country, the UN Human Rights Office said in a press statement.

They urged Iranian authorities to refrain from further unnecessary violence and immediately cease the use of lethal force to police peaceful assemblies.

“We are shocked and deeply saddened by Amini’s death. She is another victim of Iran’s ongoing repression and systematic discrimination against women and the imposition of discriminatory dress codes that deprive women of their bodily autonomy and the power of opinion, expression and Freedom of belief,” said one expert.

In October, a month after Amini’s death, a European MEP cut off her hair during a parliamentary debate in solidarity with protesting Iranian women.

“We, the people and citizens of the EU, demand an immediate and unconditional end to all acts of violence against Iranian men and women,” Swedish politician Abir Al Sahlani told an EU debate in Strasbourg. .”

Around the same time, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a White House statement that the U.S. would continue to hold Iranian officials accountable and supported the people’s right to protest freely.

“The United States will further hold those responsible for violence against peaceful protesters accountable. We will continue to hold Iranian officials accountable and support the right of Iranians to protest freely,” Biden said in a statement.

Amid the protests, Tehran, Kurdistan province and other parts of the country have also experienced prolonged internet outages since September 19. It is believed to be the third large-scale internet outage in Iran in the past 12 months, according to the United Nations human rights group. office.

In another example of Iran’s tough dress code policy, the country’s president, Ibrahim Raisy, abruptly canceled a scheduled interview with chief international anchor Christian Amanpour after she refused to wear a hijab on-air.

The interview was scheduled amid massive civilian protests erupting in the streets of Iran, where people were allegedly detained for violating the dress code.

Amanpour said on Twitter that she was told to wear a hijab, but the interview was canceled after she denied it.

In a series of tweets, the anchor said she planned to discuss the demonstrations in Iran, including an incident in which many women burned hijabs in protest of Amini’s death, among other issues.

“This will be President Tracy’s first interview on U.S. soil during his visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly. After weeks of planning and eight hours of setting up translation equipment, lights and cameras, we were ready. But without President Tracy signs,” Amanpour said in a tweet.

She reportedly waited 40 minutes for the Iranian president to show up for an interview before the interview was eventually canceled.

Amid the civilian unrest sparked by Amini’s death, several other incidents have exposed the condition of Iranian women under the watchful eye of “morality” police.

One such example is Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi, who competed in a race in South Korea in October without wearing the wardrobe accessories mandated by South Korea’s hardline Islamic government. She later had to apologize to authorities, saying it was an accident that she didn’t wear a hijab to compete.

“Due to bad timing and an unpredictable phone call asking me to climb a wall, my hood accidentally went wrong,” reads a plain text Instagram story posted on Rekabi’s account.

In a separate incident, Iranian chess player Sarah Hadem attended a tournament in Kazakhstan without a hijab, CNN reported.

And, according to Iran’s attorney general, Iran’s so-called morality police was suspended in December, seen as a consequence of a massive outburst of civilian anger and protests over Amini’s death. The landmark decision comes as anti-hijab protests enter their third month.

Iran’s Attorney General Mohammad Javad Montazeri said the morality police “has been abolished by the authorities that created it,” according to The New York Times.

In the first week of December, Iran executed a man who had injured a paramilitary, CNN reported, citing state media.

It was the first execution publicly linked to anti-hijab protests, according to Iranian media reports.

The man, identified as Mohsen Shekari, was found guilty of wounding a security official with a machete while blocking a street in Tehran.

The security official was a member of Baski’s military force, a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. He was allegedly stabbed by Shekari during a protest in Tehran on September 23.

Shekari was sentenced to death on October 23, CNN reported, citing Mizan Online, a news agency affiliated with Iran’s judiciary.

In addition, several Iranians were reportedly sentenced to death amid nationwide demonstrations sparked by Amini’s alleged incarcerated killing.

At least 333 people were executed in Iran last year, according to Iranian human rights groups. The report further revealed that official sources had announced 55 executions.

As many as 83.5% of all executions (278 in total) included in the 2021 report were not announced by authorities, the report said, adding that at least 183 of the executions (55% of all executions) were for murder charges.

Notably, India abstained from voting on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution establishing a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights abuses committed against Iranian protesters on 16 September.

The UN Human Rights Council tweeted, “At its 35th special session, the @UN Human Rights Council decided to establish a new fact-finding mission to investigate alleged #HumanRightsViolations linked to protests in the Islamic Republic of ‘Iran’ Beginning September 16, 2022.”

According to Al Jazeera, Iran’s dress code applies to women of all religions, not just Muslims, and requires them to pull the veil over their heads to cover their hair and neck.

For decades, women have increasingly rebelled against the “morality” police, especially in big cities, by wearing their headscarves back and showing their hair.

If George Floyd’s prison death in Minneapolis, Minnesota exposed the country’s racial fault lines and spawned the global Black Lives Matter movement, if A moment of reckoning for the United States; the alleged killing of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s now-defunct “moral” police is equally groundbreaking, one that may have changed the perception of women in the country. (Arnie)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)



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