Mahsa Amini, 22, was murdered by the Iran regime’s “morality police” after arresting her for letting hair show under a head scarf.
Yes, she was killed by the cops for a dress code violation.
The hijab law has been around since religious fanatics seized power in 1979, but is unpopular, and enforcement was relaxed under President Rouhani (2013-2021), but then toughened last year under a new hardline leader.
Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman, was arrested in Tehren as an out-of-town visitor. Kinda like a driver with Washington plates being pulled over in Wyoming, I guess you could say. Everyone in Wyoming knows everyone in Washington is a leftwing commie. Just kidding.
But, kidding aside, Kurds are a discriminated-against minority in Iran (see details here), and Amini’s death in police custody from a severe beating is perhaps somewhat arguably analogous to, say, a white cop’s murder of George Floyd, a black man, that sparked mass protests against police brutality and racist policing here.
In any case, Amini’s murder by regime police triggered protests, which have grown increasingly violent (not least because of police violence against protesters), and haven’t stopped. On Friday, October 15, 2022, President Biden said he was “stunned” by what’s happening in Iran (see story here).
Will this uprising topple the regime? Fox News cites experts who think it could, if the protesters get the right kind of help from the West (e.g., crippling sanctions), but Fox isn’t an objective news source. There’s no question, though, that the protests are unprecedented; and, as one of their experts pointed out, “People have brought down other totalitarian regimes through mass civil disobedience.” (See story here.)
That happened in Ukraine in 2014, where protests overthrew a dictator allied with Putin and drove him into exile, replaced by a democratically elected government, setting off the chain of events that led to Russia’s seizure of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine.
NPR, a more credible source of news than Fox, interviewed an Iranian-American writer who says Iran has a long history of uprisings, so this isn’t really different in that respect, but he’s “never seen anything like this before. The power of these young women, girls, teenagers … I don’t see how that force can be stopped, regardless of the power or the violence of the Islamic Republic.” (See story here.)
Last week, the Guardian talked to Iranian and Kurdish exiles who “believe the prospect of freedom for millions of women in their home country has never been greater,” but that may be wishful thinking on their part. Despotic regimes don’t just give up power, and they’re watching from a distance. Still, they probably have a better feel for things than we do, and they think these protests “are different from previous protests and this time there is a real possibility change will come.” (See story here.)
The answer is we don’t know, and only time will tell. It occurs to me the regime, if truly threatened, can try restoring Rouhani’s dress code policy and punish Amini’s killers to quiet the protests. But that might not be enough, given broader dissatisfactions with the regime in Iranian society.