One Year On: A Women-Led Revolution

It was September 14th or 15th that we first heard of a girl named Mahsa Jina Amini. She was in the hospital, in a coma, after being beaten in the custody of the notorious Iranian morality police. Mahsa was 22.

Every Iranian woman knows or has encountered the morality police. Those white and green vans stand in every square and hide on the street corners to arrest women who don’t cover their hair or bodies “properly.” As an Iranian woman, you do not have the right to show your hair in public. It is against the law. Iranian women have been fighting against discriminatory compulsory veiling laws for 45 years alongside other discriminatory laws. The brutal killing of Mahsa was the moment Iranian women said, “Enough is enough.” 

I can clearly remember the 16th of September 2022 when the authorities announced her death. Women were rushing to Kasra Hospital. I got there at night. Police had closed the streets around the hospital grounds, but people would not leave. There was a woman, the same age as my mom, who took off her veil and yelled: “She was the same age as my daughter. What is this? What is this that they killed a girl for it?" 

Men tried to push women away, but women insisted on staying. They started chanting, “Death to the dictator!”

Niloufar Hamedi, a journalist, Tweeted a picture of Mahsa’s father and grandmother at the hospital, mourning their child. Niloufar was arrested for publishing that picture. She has been in prison ever since.

Mahsa Zhina's family decided to bury her body in the Aychi cemetery in Saqes, Kursidtan province. The funeral became a protest. Women took off their veils and spun them in the air, chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom!” in Kurdish. It was a fascinating moment. I remember my whole body shaking when I saw the videos.

Two days later, women’s rights activists called for a protest in Tehran. As a journalist and feminist, I had to be there. It was the most important day of my life. 

On a hot afternoon, in the middle of Keshavars Boulevard in Tehran, we stood face to face with police forces, took off our headscarves, and spun them in the air, chanting "Woman, Life, Freedom.” 

The hijab is the symbol of repression for me, the chain of slavery; we finally took control of our bodies. In that moment, we witnessed the flames of the first woman-led revolution in the world.

As a journalist and feminist, I had to be there. It was the most important day of my life. 

The days after were filled with the courage of young women and girls — and men alongside them — the sounds of gunfire, the smell of tear gas, and the long lists of arrests that were published every day. Then came the pictures of those who were brutally killed by regime forces. Nika, Sarina, Khodanour, Kian, and so many more. Their beautiful faces and bright eyes — I will never forget. I will carry their faces, names, and stories with me for the rest of my life, until justice is served. More than five hundred demonstrators have been killed.

Many of my friends were arrested. Activists, feminists, journalists, celebrities, athletes, young protesters, writers — anyone who stood up against the brutality of the Islamic Republic was arrested.

I was among the thousands who were investigated and threatened. The interrogation lasted hours, and the threats were serious, but I was lucky that they let me go.

According to Amnesty International, “between September and December 2022, security forces unleashed a brutal militarized crackdown, unlawfully killing hundreds of protesters and bystanders, including dozens of children. More than half of those unlawfully killed belonged to the oppressed Baluchi and Kurdish ethnic minorities."

The authorities have increasingly used the death penalty as a tool of political repression to instill fear in the public, arbitrarily executing seven men in relation to the uprising following unfair sham trials. Dozens remain under threat of the death penalty.

Discrimination is nothing new to Iranian women. According to Human Rights Watch, “Iranian women experience discrimination in law and in practice in ways that deeply impact their lives, particularly with regard to marriage, divorce, and custody issues. Post-1979 compulsory hijab laws affect every aspect of women’s public life in Iran. In today’s Iran, a woman’s access to employment, education, social benefits, and proper health care — and even her mere public presence in society— depends on complying with compulsory hijab laws, which are routinely enforced through a web of rules and arbitrary interpretation by state agents as well as businesses.”

Yet, many Iranian women have fought against compulsory hijab despite the dangers. We made it an act of defiance.

Many of us stopped wearing compulsory hijab ever since the beginning of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising. Meanwhile, the suppression of women and girls who defy compulsory veiling continues to this day.

For the 150 years of women's fight for equal rights, for those brave women and girls who stood up in the face of oppression to attain equality, for Mahsa Amini and other young souls that paved this way with their blood, for my sisters in prison of this brutal regime, those who have been the light in this darkness, for all of those men and women who chanted “woman life freedom,” for my friends who had to flee their country and leave everyone behind, for all of us who deserve to be treated as human beings, we will not stop fighting, and we will not give up. 

To the world that has witnessed the fight of Iranian women for equality and justice, the most important step is to recognize what is happening in Iran and call it what it really is: gender apartheid. And to be the voice of millions of Iranian women who are fighting for their rights and risking their lives each and every day.

-A Journalist from Iran