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Iranian women without veils in Iran’s capital Tehran. Archive image.
1 / 2Photo: Vahid Salemi/AP/TT
The religious dictatorship in Iran may have quelled the wave of protests that followed the death of Mahsa Zhina Amini, but two years later, many continue to defy the country’s morality police.
Women who do not wear the obligatory veil are increasingly seen on the streets.
In videos from residential areas in Iranian cities, women and girls can be seen walking by with their long hair down, especially at night. By not wearing the veil, they defy the regime, risking punishment.
22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini died in September 2022 after she was arrested by the country’s morality police for not wearing her veil properly. Her death became the starting point for the protests under the slogan “woman, life, freedom”. There, not only the regulations on how women should dress were challenged, but also the religious dictatorship in Iran itself. But the demonstrations were crushed by armed security forces and at least 551 people were killed, human rights groups said. Thousands of others were arrested, according to the UN.
“Legacy of Mahsa Amini”
Today, the security forces are increasingly seen patrolling public places in Iran. Nevertheless, it is not unusual to see women without veils in the capital.
– My half-hearted courage to not wear a veil is a legacy from Mahsa Amini. We must protect this as a success, a 25-year-old student at Sharif University in Tehran told the AP news agency.
– She would have been my age if she hadn’t died.
Video clips have been circulated of young girls being treated violently by the morality police. Businesses where women have been seen without a veil are scrutinized, and surveillance cameras look for uncovered women in their cars, who can be impounded as a result.
“Staying defiant”
In 2023, a teenage girl without a veil was injured on the subway in an incident that led to her death. According to activists, in July this year, police shot a woman who tried to flee a checkpoint to avoid having her car impounded.
The country’s newly elected president Masoud Pezeshkian went to the polls promising to stop the morality police from harassing women. But the highest authority is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has previously said that removing the veil is both religiously and politically forbidden.
According to the UN, Iran has intensified its oppression of women. But still, many believe that Iranian society has changed.
– Many young women continue to defy, says Roya Boroumand of the human rights organization Abdorrahman Boroumand Center to AFP.
– Two years after the protests, the leadership of the Islamic Republic has neither restored the status quo nor regained its lost legitimacy.
FACT Background: The protests in Iran
The biggest wave of protests to shake Iran in many years started with the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini.
Amini, a Kurdish woman from northwestern Iran, was arrested by morality police in Tehran on September 13, 2022, for allegedly not wearing her mandatory headscarf properly.
Amini was taken to hospital after passing out and suffering what police say was a heart attack. This is disputed by the 22-year-old’s family, who claim that she was subjected to severe violence to the head. On September 16, she died in hospital after being in a coma.
At Amini’s funeral in his hometown, spontaneous protests erupted, which then developed into a demonstration where women took off their shawls and chanted anti-regime slogans. The protests quickly spread across the country and have since come to be about much more than just the obligatory veil.
On many occasions, the demonstrations were put down with brutal violence from the regime’s security forces.
Hundreds have been killed and thousands have been arrested. Many have been sentenced to death and several of them have been executed.
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