The protests in Iran have their origins in a video clip that has been widely circulated on social media. The clip is said to show how the 22-year-old woman is stopped by Iran’s morality police for not wearing her headscarf in line with the country’s laws. A fight then breaks out before the woman is forcibly taken into a police car.
The incident took place on Tuesday, and shortly afterwards word came that the woman had fallen into a coma in police custody. On Friday, it was then announced that the woman’s life could not be saved.
Demonstrations outside the hospital
The course of events has raised suspicions that the woman was subjected to excessive violence by the police and died from her injuries, and Friday’s death notice was the starting point for demonstrations outside the hospital in Tehran where she was treated. In clips spread on social media, protesters are heard shouting “death to the dictator” while a large number of police officers are seen at the scene, reports Reuters.
The demonstrations should be seen in the light of the fact that human rights activists in recent months have called on women in Iran to take off their veils in protest against the country’s strict Islamic laws, writes the news agency. Subsequently, several clips depicting confrontations between police and women have been widely circulated on social media.
The police: Had a heart attack
Iranian authorities completely deny that the woman was subjected to excessive violence. Police say she was taken to a police station to be “convinced and educated”, whereupon she suffered a heart attack.
To support their description of the course of events, Iranian authorities have published surveillance images from the police station, where the woman is seen collapsing after getting up to speak to a police officer. Reuters has attempted to verify the content without success. The woman’s relatives also denied to the news agency that she had any underlying heart problems.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, in turn, has tasked the country’s interior minister to “urgently and thoroughly investigate the cause of the incident”.