Four years on, Iranians reflect on impact of ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’

Tehran, Iran – Four years ago this week, Mahsa “Jina” Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, was leaving a metro station in Tehran with members of her family when she was detained by the Guidance Patrol, Iran’s morality police, for perceived noncompliance with Iran’s mandatory hijab laws.

Amini’s headscarf had slightly receded from her forehead, so two female and two male members of the morality police put her in a van and transported her to a so-called re-education centre, where she would receive guidance on how to dress in a way deemed appropriate by the authorities.

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Security camera footage released by the government showed Amini in the downtown Tehran re-education centre collapsing onto the ground, as a chador-clad policewoman scolded her. She was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead three days later on September 16, 2022.

Authorities claimed Amini had pre-existing health conditions and denied any wrongdoing. But her father, Amjad Amini, said fellow prisoners told him her daughter had been beaten inside the police van.

Two female journalists, working for local newspapers, helped break the story and grabbed the attention of the nation. The reports included a heart-wrenching image of her parents embracing in front of the intensive care unit where Amini died. The journalists were later imprisoned on national security charges.

Small demonstrations took place in front of the hospital, and then in her hometown of Saqqez, in the western province of Kurdistan, after her funeral. Within several weeks, protests had spread across Iran, calling for greater freedoms for women and Iranians in general. The protests lasted into early 2023 and received support from across the globe.

The United Nations’ Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran later corroborated reports by foreign-based rights groups that at least 550 Iranians were killed during the protests, including 68 children and 49 women in 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces.

A Kurdish saying, “Woman, Life, Freedom”, became the slogan of this unprecedented movement, which has significantly altered how Iranians dress and think.

“I thought we would never be able to choose the way we want to dress, but the movement created massive cultural change and a more progressive identity that can never be taken away now,” Bahar, a 26-year-old woman living in Tehran, who used just her first name for security reasons, told Al Jazeera.

Bahar said she never believed in the mandatory hijab and always wished she could choose what to wear, as most women across the globe do, including in almost all other Islamic countries.

For months after the protests died down, she would keep a headscarf around her neck for fear of reprisals by the authorities. Despite the lingering risks, she no longer carries that headscarf, either.

Setareh, another young resident of the capital, has the support of more family members for her choice of what she wears and how she looks. She faces fewer instances of verbal abuse on Tehran’s streets for how she dresses, and is rarely turned down by ride-hailing drivers for not wearing the hijab.

“People and families, especially men, are now more accustomed to women dressing more naturally, even if they don’t like it,” she told Al Jazeera.

Many Iranians have reflected on the movement online, with one post recalling the time two young women took the then-unprecedented step of eating breakfast in a traditional downtown Tehran restaurant without mandatory hijabs.

They were arrested and later released, but their actions opened the way for countless others after them to do the same.

What are the authorities saying?

Wearing a hijab has remained mandatory for women in Iran since shortly after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, and authorities have frequently attempted to reinstate it where possible.

When the protests started in late 2022, the government tried to push its own narrative by staging counter-demonstrations. State-linked and more traditional voices continue to criticise and attack those who ignore the dress code required by the state.

A harsh hijab bill was passed in late 2023 that envisioned tougher punishments for offenders, but President Masoud Pezeshkian said he could not enforce it since most people rejected the law and it could lead to more unrest. This was happening at a time when Iran was facing eternal pressure from the US and its allies, he added.

Mai Sato, special UN rapporteur on human rights in Iran, said in a statement on Wednesday that even though that law was suspended, numerous cafes, restaurants and shops continue to be closed by authorities and some staff or customers are arrested for breaking the hijab rules.

This week, local reports said several women were arrested over the hijab laws and put into vans and buses by armed security forces in the city of Isfahan. Reports of other crackdowns have emerged in Rasht and Mashhad, although the authorities have not confirmed or commented on the incidents.

Videos circulating online on Wednesday showed that some businesses were closed in Saqqez and other Kurdistan cities to mark the anniversary of Amini’s death, with security forces present in main squares and streets, likely anticipating protests.

This image posted on Twitter shows an unveiled woman standing on top of a vehicle as thousands make their way towards Aichi cemetery in Saqqez, Mahsa Amini’s hometown in the western Iranian province of Kurdistan, to mark 40 days since her death, defying heightened security measures as part of a bloody crackdown on women-led protests [AFP]

Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a senior official and the father-in-law of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, told local media this week that a “decadent Western lifestyle” was being propagated by Iran’s “enemies” inside the country through women’s unveilings.

Iran remains in a state of war since the United States and Israel launched strikes on February 28, killing much of the Iranian leadership and 120 children at a school in Minab.

“Due to war conditions, for now we can’t enter the arena of hijab the way we should,” he said, indicating that police had been lax on enforcing the law due to the current situation.

Hossein Taeb, head of the Basij paramilitary force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and another figure close to the office of the supreme leader, said the authorities must deal with hijab through unity.

“We must not allow such issues to disturb our domestic cohesion,” Taeb said during a speech this week to a group of Basij commanders.

In an extensive report released on Wednesday, Amnesty International reiterated its previous findings that Iranian authorities had committed “crimes against humanity” during the Mahsa Amini protests, and called for accountability.

It named 87 Iranian officials who it said should be criminally investigated, spanning national, provincial and local command structures, including the IRGC, police and Interior Ministry authorities.

Names included Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and armed forces commander Mohammad Bagheri, both of whom were killed during the war, as well as Ahmad Vahidi, the incumbent commander-in-chief of the IRGC, who was interior minister at the time.