To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
September 21, 2022
by by Frank Arango, Seattle Workers' Voice
While visiting the Iranian
capital, Tehran, on September 13, 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini
was arrested by the theocratic "morality police" for wearing an
"improper" hijab--which usually means a woman's hair was not completely
covered with her headscarf. But Ms Amini collapsed in a holding area
after being removed from the police van, and she was sent to a nearby
hospital in a coma, brain dead. Three days later she died.
Now the authorities claim that Ms Amini had had an epileptic seizure and then died from a heart attack, but this is beyond belief. Her father has repeatedly said his daughter was healthy and didn't suffer from any such condition. He also reports that he saw bruises on her legs when he visited the hospital. Additionally, witnesses have said they could hear her being beaten inside the police van. Pictures of Ms Amini's face in hospital show discoloring around her ears that seem consistent with physical blows to the head. And a hacktivist-purloined CT scan of her head show a bone fracture, hemorrhage, and brain edema, while a hospital worker says that Mahsa’s condition “was such that she could not be saved nor was surgery possible because her brain tissue was seriously damaged, and it was clear that the patient was not injured by a single punch and must have received many blows to her head.” (1)
Thus, Mahsa Amini was murdered by the "morality police," and they lied in order to cover it up.
Since there are nearly seven million Kurds in Iran (about 8% of the population) who have long fought back against national oppression, it's no surprise that the people in Kurdistan Province immediately went into the streets and shopkeepers in several cities went on strike. But protests demanding justice were soon occurring in other provinces as well as in the capital. And since probably over 70 per cent of Iranian women already oppose mandatory wearing of the hijab (2), large numbers of women demonstrators have ripped theirs off and sometimes burned them (3), with male demonstrators supporting them. Some women also cut their hair, which is another supposedly immoral act that one can be arrested or fined for. Thus, a key democratic demand being raised in the continuing protests is that women should be free to choose whether they want to wear the hijab. The international press reports other slogans that are being raised, such as "We are all Mahsa!", "Justice, liberty, no to mandatory hijab", "Woman, Life, Freedom!", "We don't want Islamic government, down with the Dictatorship!", and "Death to Khamenei!"
The regime’s response has been repression, such as murdering five
protesters on Monday, September 19, in Kurdistan Province, sending
militiamen to attack crowds, and large numbers of arrests. (The
government has also partially shut down social media.) But the masses
have been fighting back by stoning and sometimes chasing the police,
burning police vehicles and similar things. In the midst of this,
President Ebrahim Raisi, who has been stepping up the "morality police"
attacks on women (4), hypocritically expressed his "condolences" to
Mahsa Amini's mother and family, and the head of Tehran's "morality
police" was temporarily suspended. But since the protests have
continued to spread, it seems that these actions have fooled few.
While a woman's right to choose to have an abortion is being outlawed in many states in this country, a woman's right to choose whether or not to wear the hijab is being fought for in Iran. This illustrates that the fight against the oppression of women is global. Further, this fight is in the moral and material interests of working men, which is why so many of them are presently protesting in Iran. We salute the inspiring struggle if the working women, men and youth of Iran!
(1) "Skull CT scan proves Mahsa Amini was tortured to death", September 19, 2022, California Kurdish Community Center.
(2) "Iran
has introduced 2,000 new morality police units in reaction to what
officials call an 'increasing defiance' of the compulsory wearing of
hijabs", June 9, 2019, Unika News.
(4) Next year the "morality police" (Gasht-e Ershad) will no longer be able to impose fines or arrest members of the public. Instead, thousands of undercover Gasht-e Ershad agents (spies) will be used to report supposed moral transgressions to the regular police, who will then decide whether to warn, fine, arrest or beat someone. <>
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