The Iranian regime is like a lumbering dinosaur that has failed to see the meteor hurtling towards Earth that will cause its extinction. Instead of responding to the cries of “Women, Life, Freedom” from the tens of millions who took to the streets following the murder last year of Mahsa Amini, the young Kurdish girl beaten to death by the morality police in Tehran, the mullahs have decided to ramp up even tougher restrictions on women. Now, with striking echoes of what happened to Mahsa Amini, another young Kurdish girl has been left in a coma, after a confrontation with female morality police officers on the Tehran metro.
Armita Garawand, 16, was left with severe injuries after being apprehended by agents of the notorious morality police at the Shohada metro station on October 1. Though a resident of Tehran, Garawand hails from the city of Kermanshah in Kurdish-populated western Iran. She is being treated in Tehran’s Fajr hospital under heavy security. Even her own family has been prevented from visiting her. Maryam Lotfi, a journalist from the state-run Shargh daily newspaper, sought in the aftermath of the incident to visit the hospital to report on the issue, but was immediately detained. But mirroring what they said after Mahsa Amini’s death, the regime’s authorities are denying that Armita Garawand was beaten by the security forces and insist that she simply “fainted”, due to low blood pressure. When Mahsa Amini died, the Iranian coroner's report denied her death had been caused by blows to the head and limbs while in the custody of Iran's morality police and tried to link her death to pre-existing medical conditions, which her family flatly denied.
The mullahs need to hide the truth. They are terrified that another uprising may engulf their theocratic regime and sweep them from power. Following many months of protests that continued well into 2023 and led to the death of over 750 protesters and the arrest of more than 30,000, the mullahs have doubled down on security, hanging more than 600 people so far this year in an attempt to frighten the population into acquiescence. They remain on high alert for any upsurge of social tension. The case has become the subject of intense interest on social media, with a video of the incident said by some to show the teen, with friends and apparently unveiled, being pushed into the metro by female police agents. She apparently sustained a serious head injury.
Instead of relaxing their misogynistic dress code, the clerical regime’s authorities have launched a renewed push to crack down on women defying the Islamic Republic’s strict dress rules, including the mandatory hijab. According to the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), women and girls “face increased violence, arbitrary arrests and heightened discrimination after the Islamic Republic re-activated its forced-veiling police patrols.” Lawmakers in the Majlis (parliament) voted at the end of September for a bill enforcing mandatory ‘Support for the Culture of Hijab and Chastity’, toughening penalties on women who flout the strict Islamic dress code. State media reported that under the new bill, women failing to wear a headscarf or appropriate modest clothing, face jail terms of up to 10 years.
Since Mahsa Amini’s death, millions of Iranian women and girls have openly defied the law, some even cutting off their hair in mass public protests. In predictable retaliation, the regime’s authorities have stepped up morality police patrols and have fitted thousands of surveillance cameras in public squares and shopping malls to detect female offenders. Some businesses have even been closed for allowing women to enter their premises without wearing the headscarf. Women have been filmed in their cars by CCTV and summoned to the local police stations where they have to pay hefty fines for not wearing their hijabs. Repeat offenses lead to imprisonment.
The politics of fear have been key to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s theocratic rulers’ hold on power for 44 years. Women cannot dance publicly, cannot drive motorcycles and cannot even travel without parental or spousal approval. They are prohibited from attending football or other men’s sporting events. The elderly and increasingly irrational Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has even dictated that female cartoon characters must be properly veiled. The aging leaders who came to power following the revolution in 1979 are completely out of touch with Gen Z and it is now Gen Z that they fear the most.
Fearless Iranian women are at the forefront of the continuing upsurge in protests, demanding the overthrow of the theocratic and misogynist dictatorship. Young people have flocked to join the burgeoning resistance units of the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) which now have a presence in every town and city in Iran.The PMOI Resistance Units have torched command posts and offices of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the regime’s Gestapo. They have destroyed regime effigies and banners of Ayatollah Khamenei and pasted up posters of Maryam Rajavi, leader of the main democratic opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran and the PMOI. Government websites have been hacked by Resistance cyber experts inside the country and even national government broadcast channels have been interrupted with anti-regime and pro-PMOI messages.
The mullahs will be shuddering with fear that 16-year-old Armita Garawand might die. It would be the spark that could ignite a volcanic eruption in Iran, sweeping the mullahs from power and restoring freedom, justice, democracy, women’s rights and human rights to 75 million Iranians who have suffered tyranny for too long.
Struan Stevenson represented Scotland in the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014. He was President of the Parliament's Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). Struan is also Chair of the ‘In Search of Justice’ (ISJ) committee on the protection of political freedoms in Iran. He is the Coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change (CiC). He is an international lecturer on the Middle East and is also president of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA). His latest book is entitled ‘Dictatorship and Revolution. Iran - A Contemporary History.’