The Death of Mahsa Amini Sparked Global Protests for Iranian Women’s Rights

Iranians have been protesting the death of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini for over three weeks, despite facing internet shutdowns and violent repression. In response to the young woman’s death under the custody of Iran’s morality police, Iranian women have taken to the streets and burned headscarves in an act of defiance against the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. At least 41 people have been killed during these protests, according to official numbers, though human rights groups say the true number may be higher.

In one widely circulated video, an Iranian woman walks toward security forces without wearing her state-mandated hijab to protest against Amini’s death. Another clip shows a woman cutting her hair in the main square of the Iranian city of Kerman, as people clap their hands and chant “Death to the dictator.”

“I invite feminists & freedom fighters around the world, to join us supporting Iranian women and people’s uprising against regime,” Masih Alinejad, an Iranian opposition activist and writer in exile who resides in New York City, wrote on Twitter.

In another tweet, she said: “#MahsaAmini is becoming a symbol for #IranRevolution.”

Amini was detained on Sept. 13 for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely, which authorities deemed a violation of strictures demanding women to wear Islamic headscarves in public. She died three days later while still in police custody. Officials say that she had a heart attack, but her family has disputed the official cause of death, leading to the public outcry.

Solidarity protests have also erupted in other countries, including Canada, Poland, and Lebanon, and the hashtag #MahsaAmini has also been used all over the world. In the Czech Republic, one video showed a woman cutting her hair to show support for Iranian women.

“What I think is really beautiful about this moment is that this chants of women, life, freedom really encapsulates that this is not just about a specific situation happening in Iran but that Iranian women are kind of showing a model that progress and liberation for all people can be led by women and must center women’s rights,” Hoda Katebi, an Iranian American writer, said in an interview with MSNBC.

Politicians all over the world have weighed in as well — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sept. 26 announced new sanctions against Iranian entities, including the morality police and leadership in the country.

"We’ve seen Iran disregarding human rights time and time again, now we see it with the death of Mahsa Amini and the crackdown on protests," Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa. “To the women in Iran who are protesting, and to those who are supporting you — we stand with you.”

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was also among those who took to Twitter to express her solidarity to the women and allies in Iran.

“Mahsa Amini was senselessly murdered by the same patriarchal and autocratic forces repressing women the world over,” she tweeted. “The right to choose belongs to us all, from hijabs to reproductive care.”

Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Director Heba Morayef said that the protests show that it is high time for change in Iran — a country the organization is investigating for violent repression.

“The anger expressed on the streets has also shown how Iranians feel about the omnipresent so-called ‘morality police’ and compulsory veiling laws,” Morayef said in a statement. “It is high time for these discriminatory laws and the security forces enforcing them to be completely removed from Iranian society, for once and for all.”