A young woman named Mahsha Amini died in police custody over the hijab issue in Iran. The country’s law and order forces arrested more than 700 protesters, including at least 60 women, in only one province in the ongoing protests demanding a fair trial of this incident.
This information was reported by Al-Arabiya citing the Iranian news agency Tasnim News Agency.
General Azizullah Maleki, chief of police in Guilan province of Iran, said that they arrested 739 protesters, including 60 women.
Earlier on Saturday, the country’s state media reported that at least 35 people have been killed in protests that have lasted for more than a week.
However, the Iranian Organization for Human Rights (IHR) claimed that at least 50 people were killed in the protests.
On September 15, 22-year-old Mahsha Amini was arrested by the morality police of the country for violating the hijab law. Then he was sent to the police detention camp. Mahsha Amini died last Friday after being in a coma for three days.
According to police, Mahsha Amini died of heart attack. However, eyewitnesses alleged that Mahsha Amini was tortured while being taken to the police van. That’s why he died.
There are massive demonstrations and protests in 80 cities of the country in protest of this incident. Law and order forces have taken strict action to quell the protests. The number of casualties in their firing is increasing every day.
On the morning of September 17, the funeral of Mahsha Amini was held in Kurdistan, the western province of Iran. After his funeral, some people left, while others raised slogans demanding a fair trial. Then they gathered in front of the governor’s office. There they also started raising slogans demanding fair trial. The security guards then dispersed them by firing tear gas.
From there, massive protests against hijab started across the country.
The Iranian government is trying to control social media to control the protests. Already the network activities of various mobile companies have been slowed down. Efforts are being made to control the use of other media including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram. Despite this, the intensity of the protests continues to increase.
Amidst the protests, the country’s human rights activist Melika Karagozlu was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for uploading a video on Facebook without a hijab on September 19.
Hijab has been compulsory for women since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. This dress code is strictly enforced by the country’s moral police.
But for the past few years, there has been a strong reaction to the implementation of dress code rules by various people, especially young women, around the various activities of the moral police. In various videos published on social media, policemen often force women into police vehicles.
In 2017, dozens of women took off their hijabs in public to protest. Then the authorities took strict action against them.
(September 25)