Days after being detained by Iran’s morality police for purportedly failing to observe the country’s hijab regulations, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, died in a hospital.
Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, 22, died after being violently arrested in Iran for violating the hijab rules of Iran.
A flood of reactions both inside and outside of Iran have followed the death of Mahsa Amini by the country’s religious police, aka guidance patrol.
Afghan social media users are sharing pictures of Mahsa, and in their comments, they are drawing comparisons between the Taliban and the Iranian morality police, a religious police force with a similar aim and track record.
Anti-government protests have been going on in Iran since yesterday. Protests in and around the hospital, on Arjantin Square in Tehran, at night from houses’ roofs, and in the cemetery have been reported by the local media.
“Death to the dictator” is chanted by the demonstrators in the videos that have been made public. In response to this “barbaric” murder, Iranian and Afghan artists have reacted, and both domestic and foreign political figures have denounced it.
Former Iranian parliament vice-speaker Ali Motahari stated to the Iranian Jamaran in response to the beating of Mahsa Amini, “Incidents like the case of Mahsa Amini portray us to the world like the Taliban.”
Among those who reacted to the Kurdish-Iranian woman’s death are two Afghan poets. Afghan poet Waheed Baktash wrote that “There is a corrupt and repressive government in our neighborhood that never stops killing its citizens.”
Kawa Jibran, intellectual, activist, poet, and writer of Afghanistan also condemned the actions of the Iranian morality police, writing, “The sick thought is an active killer when it enters society; it is a full-fledged monster that feeds on human blood under any pretense.”
