In the streets of Tehran or in exile, they are the ones who challenge the regime after the death of Mahsa Amini, the young woman arrested for wearing the wrong veil
“It’s happening, it’s really happening, and women are leading the way. The Iranian regime will be brought down by women”, are the words of Masih Alinejad in a recent interview with ‘The New Yorker’. The dream for which this 46-year-old Iranian activist, in exile since 2009, works comes true with each handkerchief that a woman burns in the streets of the Islamic republic. For ten days thousands of Iranians have been protesting against the use of the compulsory veil and the spark of anger was the death at the hands of the Moral Police of the young Kurdish Mahsa Amini. Since then, the images of young people who take off their veil and set it on fire in the streets as a sign of protest have been repeated. There are already at least forty dead and hundreds injured in the worst protests the Islamic system has faced since 2019, when the streets erupted due to rising prices.
The social media accounts of Alinejad, who works as a journalist on the US channel Voice of America (VOA), are fuming these days because she has been promoting a campaign since 2014 under the name ‘My silent freedom’ that encourages women to record themselves on video doing prohibited things like taking off her hijab in the middle of the street. She now has more than half a million followers on Twitter and is present in all major US media to insist that “the Iranian regime will be brought down by women.” According to ‘The New Yorker’, the Islamic republic would have tried to assassinate Alinejad on at least two occasions, which is why she lives under the protection of the federal Police.
The reporter, imprisoned
With each passing day it is more difficult to obtain first-hand information on the protests. In the videos, many of them impossible to verify independently, large groups of protesters are seen confronting the security forces and burning public furniture in different cities of the country. The work in exile of activists like Alinejad serves to give a global echo to that of reporters like Niloufar Hamedi, the first person who reported what happened to Amini. The journalist for the reformist daily ‘Sharg’ is under arrest and in solitary confinement, as reported by her husband, Mohammad Hossein Ajorlou.
Hamedi was the first to go to the Kasra hospital where the police admitted Amini in a coma and took a photo of her broken parents hugging each other in the corridor of the medical center. That image went viral and served to alert what had happened to the 22-year-old girl during her brief detention. The reporter has paid for this exclusive with the jail and her husband wrote on Twitter that, after four days of visits and calls to the Ministry of Information and the Evin jail, they gave him permission for a short phone call. At the moment there is no case filed against her and the Police insist that the investigation “is open”, collects the ‘Iranwire’ portal.
Hamedi is part of the group of reporters that the regime has arrested in recent days for reporting on the protests and the Iranian Press Association is demanding the release of all of them. The regime does not want witnesses and as usual every time there is this type of mobilization, it opts for internet cuts, arrests of informants and restricts the issuance of visas to foreign press. This is not the image of the Islamic republic that they want to give to the world, but although they hide it, it is an important part of that system that after 43 years has expired.
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