The death of Mahsa Amini sparks Iran protests. Why?
Fourteen days past the tragic death of Mahsa Amini in police custody, Iran is still engulfed in angry protests.
We’re going to discuss how and why the death of Mahsa Amini, an innocent woman, sparked massive protests across the country, jolting the Iranian regime’s pillars of power.
I’d like to start by asking you to explain the death of Mahsa Amini in terms of violence against women and how could such a thing happen in Iran.
Of course, the situation in Iran is very different for women.
Women could be killed for failing to observe the regime’s dress code because enforcing the mandatory Hijab is one of the main pillars of the regime’s national security. Anyone who opposes the compulsory veil is regarded as an agent of foreign powers intending to undermine the regime’s stability and national security. That’s why the opponents of mandatory Hijab in Iran are flogged and fined, sentenced to long prison terms, and most recently forced to make false confessions on TV.
Now I can see that in the progression of such harsh confrontations with women, and after extracting forced confessions from Sepideh Rashno, now we face the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.
Exactly! That’s the point I was trying to make. Such brutal confrontations with Iranian women date back to the early days of the regime’s rule.
In 1979, when the mullahs seized power in Iran, they hijacked the leadership of a revolution that was supposed to bring freedom and independence to the Iranian people.
The backward, fundamentalist mullahs faced a progressive and freedom-loving society that had torn the bondage of a dictatorship. But the mullahs were unable to respond to society’s needs.
Less than one month into their reign, the mullahs found the solution in coercing women to wear the veil.
The solution fits well with the mullahs’ misogynist vision and allowed them to conceal their politically-motivated savagery and oppression in a religious wrap for justification.
In this way, they could clamp down on the entire society and terrorize them, both women and men.
That’s where breaching this religious coercion becomes a national security threat and is, therefore, harshly dealt with to the point of killing a woman!
I’m sure many people remember that the revolutionary guards walked in the streets pushing thumb tacks in the foreheads of women whose scarves slid back. State agents used razor blades and slashed women’s faces to enforce the mandatory Hijab in the early days. They banned women’s entrance to coffee shops and hospitals and shopping centers if they were improperly veiled. And of course, they gave 74 lashes to women who did not observe the mandatory Hijab.
Then there were days that state-backed agents splashed acid on improperly veiled women.
But those days are gone. The people of Iran have no illusions, whatsoever, about the religious pretenses of the power-hungry mullahs’ intentions of plundering the public and spending their wealth on war and terrorism.
In their protests, they chant, “The enemy is right here. It’s a lie when they say the enemy is America!”
We had seen women at the forefront of all those protests. They also openly defy and resist the regime’s attempts to impose the compulsory veil, despite knowing the price.
That’s why Ebrahim Raisi, a mass murderer turned president who’s incriminated in the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, ordered the State Security Force and all the 27 institutions in charge of enforcing the veil last July to take harsher measures to enforce the mandatory Hijab.
They even established military bases to organize the morality police and make more recruitments.
Since then, we had quite a few instances of truly savage treatment of women in the streets, beating and dragging them on the ground, pushing them into the State Security vans by brute force. There was even an example when a mother stood in front of the van and begged them not to take away her daughter with a heart condition.
But they took away the young woman and she died several days after being released from custody.
One can conclude that because of these savageries, society has become volatile as a powder keg, and the death of Mahsa Amini was an effective spark.
Yes, the Guidance patrols’ ruthless brutality against a young woman, fracturing her skull and causing brain hemorrhage by the heavy blows of the baton to her head, acted as a trigger and a spark.
The powder keg is widespread discontent over the lack of freedoms, the bankrupt economy, corruption of the government, and frequent massive embezzlements, while people’s baskets are empty and poverty spreads with every passing day. This is the pent-up anger of 44 years under the mullahs’ rule.
That’s why young people and women do not let the protests die down after 14 days and keep going despite 300 people killed and 15,000 arrested. They are willing to pay the price to the end.
