[Stire] Iran's protests have been crushed, but Mahsa Amini’s death is still felt a year later around the world

[REFLX]

A year after her death, thousands of people across the world are expected to march in memory of Mahsa Amini — but Iranian authorities have worked to ensure that there will not be a repeat of the demonstrations that swept the country last year.

Amini’s death on Sept. 16, 2022, after being detained by the country’s morality police sparked a wave of mass unrest. The intense crackdown that followed has largely stifled the protest movement, with new detentions and draft laws being discussed in anticipation of the anniversary. 

Yet the death of this 22-year-old Kurdish woman, who had been accused of not wearing her hijab properly, can still be felt in Iran, where many women now choose to walk the streets without a headscarf, defying the state, and in the dozens of foreign cities — in the U.S., Europe and beyond —  that will hold demonstrations on Saturday.

The nationwide outpouring of anger that followed Amini’s death quickly developed into the biggest challenge to Iran’s theocratic establishment since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.  

Iranian women and girls defiantly removed and sometimes burned their headscarves in public, while others around the world cut their hair in solidarity. 

Although Iran has had episodes of mass protests in recent decades, the uprising after Amini’s death was shaped and dominated by women, who adopted the slogan “Woman, life, freedom.” 

“She represented the grievances of every single Iranian woman who has experienced the brutal repression of the hijab over 44 years,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran. “So in a way, she became a symbol of every woman’s struggle.”

Though the underlying human rights issues and economic troubles that drove much of the protests persist, the government’s intense crackdown has largely quashed public unrest — and the authorities want to keep it that way. 

Amini's father, Amjad Amini, was "briefly detained" by Iranian authorities on Saturday, according to the state-affiliated Fars news agency, ahead of planned protests across the world in support of women in Iran.

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