TEHRAN: Six months ago this week, Mahsa Amini was arrested for allegedly flouting Iran’s strict dress code for women. Within days she was dead, sparking the country’s biggest protests in years.
The 22-year ethnic Kurd became a household name inside Iran, a rallying point for demands for change. Around the world, she became a hero for women’s rights campaigners and a symbol for Western opponents of the Islamic republic.
Amini was visiting the capital Tehran with her brother and cousins when she was arrested as they were leaving a metro station in the city center last September.
Accused of wearing “inappropriate” attire, she was taken to a police station by officers of the morality police.
There she collapsed after a quarrel with a policewoman, according to a short surveillance video released by the authorities.
She spent three days in hospital in a coma before her death on September 16, which the authorities blamed on underlying health issues.
For many, the young woman from the western city of Saqez personified the fight against the obligation to wear the headscarf. Her name became the rallying point for a protest movement that gripped the country for months.
The epitaph engraved on her tomb reads: “You are not dead Mahsa, your name has become a symbol.”
Almost overnight, her portrait became ubiquitous in Iran’s cities, fly-postered on walls and held aloft by protesters. It even made the cover of some magazines published inside Iran, including the March edition of the monthly Andisheh Pouya.
“Unknown before her death, Mahsa has become a symbol of oppression and her innocent face reinforces this image,” said political scientist Ahmad Zeidabadi.
The protests over her death in custody, which began in the capital and in her native Kurdistan province, swiftly mushroomed into a nationwide movement for change.
Public anger over her death merged with “a series of problems, including the economic crisis, attitudes toward the morality police, or political issues such as the disqualification of candidates for election” by Iran’s conservative-dominated vetting body the Guardian Council, said sociologist Abbas Abdi.
Spearheaded by young people demanding gender equality and greater openness without a leader or political program, the street protests peaked late last year.
Hundreds of people were killed, including dozens of security force personnel. Thousands more were arrested for participating in what officials described as “riots” and blamed on hostile forces linked to the United States, Israel and their allies.
In February, after the protests abated and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei decreed a partial amnesty, the authorities began to release thousands of people arrested in connection with the protests.
Some 22,600 people “linked to the riots” have so far been released, the head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said this week.
But Abdi said protesters could return to the streets again as the underlying grievances remained unaddressed.
“The demonstrations are over, but I doubt the protest has ended,” he said, noting that “the main causes of the crisis remain.
“In the current situation, any incident can trigger new protests.”
He cited as an example the public anger sparked by a spate of mystery poisonings that have affected thousands of pupils at more than 200 girls’ schools over the past three months.
The mass demonstrations inside Iran, among the largest since the 1979 revolution, prompted some in the exiled opposition to talk of an imminent change of regime.
“Some people, especially in the diaspora, have mistakenly bet on the fall of the Islamic republic in the very near future,” political scientist Zeidabadi said.
Zeidabadi argued that the emigres had misunderstood the nature of the protest movement which he said was more “civic” than political.
He stressed that, viewed in that fashion, the movement had produced “results,” notably a quiet relaxation in enforcement of the dress code for women.
“A certain degree of freedom from the hijab is tolerated even if the law and the rules have not changed,” Zeidabadi said.
He predicted similarly discreet and cautious reforms in other areas, notably the economy, which has been blighted by inflation of around 50 percent and a record depreciation of the rial against the dollar.
“It seems that the Islamic republic has realized the need for a change of policy, although there is no consensus within it on a lasting response to meet the challenge.”
Mahsa Amini not forgotten in Iran six months after death
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Mahsa Amini not forgotten in Iran six months after death
- For many, the young woman from the western city of Saqez personified the fight against the obligation to wear the headscarf
- The protests over her death in custody swiftly mushroomed into a nationwide movement for change
Foreign women linked to Daesh group in Syrian camp hope for amnesty after government offensive
- Many of the women are either wives or widows of Daesh fighters who were defeated in Syria
- “There were changes in the behavior of children and women. They became more hostile,” the camp’s director said
ROJ CAMP, Syria: Foreign women linked to the Daesh group and living in a Syrian camp housing more than 2,000 people near the border with Iraq are hoping that an amnesty may be on the horizon after a government offensive weakened the Kurdish-led force that guards the camp.
The women spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday in northeast Syria’s Roj camp, where hundreds of mostly women and children linked to Daesh have been held for nearly a decade.
The camp remains under control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which until recently controlled much of northeastern Syria. A government offensive this month captured most of the territory the group previously held, including the much larger Al-Hol camp, which is holding nearly 24,000 mostly women and children linked to Daesh.
Many of the women are either wives or widows of Daesh fighters who were defeated in Syria in March 2019, marking the end of what was once a self-declared caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria.
The most well-known resident of the Roj camp, Shamima Begum, was 15 when she and two other girls fled from London in 2015 to marry Daesh fighters in Syria. Begum married a Dutch man fighting for Daesh and had three children, who all died.
Last month, Begum lost her appeal against the British government’s decision to revoke her UK citizenship. Begum refused to speak to AP journalists at the camp.
The director of the Roj camp, Hakmiyeh Ibrahim, said that the government’s offensive on northeast Syria has emboldened the camp residents, who now tell guards that soon they will be free and Kurdish guards will be jailed in the camp instead.
“There were changes in the behavior of children and women. They became more hostile,” the camp’s director said. “It gave them hope that the Daesh group is coming back strongly.”
Since former Syrian President Bashar Assad was toppled in a lightning rebel offensive in December 2024, the country’s new army is made up of a patchwork of former insurgent groups, many of them with Islamist ideologies.
The group led by now-interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa was once linked to Al-Qaeda although Al-Sharaa’s group and Daesh were rivals and fought for years. Since becoming president, Al-Sharaa — formerly known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al-Golani — has joined the global coalition against Daesh.
Camp residents hope for amnesty
One woman from Tunisia who identified herself only as Buthaina, pointed out that Al-Sharaa was removed from the UN and US lists of terrorists.
“People used to say that Al-Golani was the biggest terrorist. What happened to him later? He became the president of Syria. He is not a terrorist any more,” she said. “The international community gave Al-Golani amnesty. I should be given amnesty too.”
She added, “I did not kill anyone or do anything.”
The camp director said more than 2,300 people are housed in the Roj camp. They include a small number of Syrians and Iraqis, but the vast majority of them — 742 families — come from nearly 50 other countries, the bulk of them from states in the former Soviet Union.
That is in contrast to Al-Hol camp, where most residents are Syrians and Iraqis who can be more easily repatriated. Other countries have largely been unwilling to take back their citizens. Human rights groups have for years cited poor living conditions and pervasive violence in the camps.
The US military has begun moving male Daesh detainees from Syrian prisons to detention centers in Iraq, but there is no clear plan for the repatriation of women and children at the Roj Camp.
“What is happening now is exactly what we have been warning about for years. It is the foreseeable result of international inaction,” said Beatrice Eriksson, the cofounder of the children rights organization Repatriate the Children in Sweden. “The continued existence of these camps is not an unfortunate by-product of conflict, it is a political decision.”
Some women don’t want to go home
Some of the women interviewed by the AP said they want to go back home, while others want to stay in Syria.
“I did not come for tourism. Syria is a Muslim country. Germany is all infidels,” said a German woman who identified herself only as Aysha, saying that she plans to stay.
Another woman, a Belgian who identified herself as Cassandra, said she wants to get out of the camp but would like to stay in the Kurdish-controlled area of Syria.
She said that her French husband was an Daesh fighter killed in the northern city of Raqqa, once considered the de facto capital by Daesh. She said Belgium has only repatriated women who had children, unlike her. She was 18 when she came to Syria, she said.
Cassandra added that when fighting broke out between government forces and Kurdish fighters, she started receiving threats from other camp residents because she had good relations with the Kurdish guards.
Future of the camps in limbo
The government push into northeast Syria led to chaos in some of the more than a dozen detention centers where nearly 9,000 members of Daesh have been held for years.
Syrian government forces are now in control of Al-Aqtan prison near Raqqa as well as the Shaddadeh prison near the border with Iraq, where more than 120 detainees managed to flee amid the chaos before most of them were captured again.
Part of an initial ceasefire agreement between Damascus and the SDF included the Kurdish-led group handing over management of the camps and detention centers to the Syrian government.
Buthaina, the Tunisian citizen, said her husband and her son are held in a prison. She said her husband worked in cleaning and did not fight, while her son fought with the extremists.
She has been in Roj for nine years and saw her other children grow up without proper education or a childhood like other children.
“All we want is freedom. Find a solution for us,” Buthaina said.
She said the Tunisian government never checked on them, but now she hopes that “if Al-Golani takes us there will be a solution.”
She said those accused of crimes should stand trial and others should be set free.
“I am not a terrorist. The mistake I made is that I left my country and came here,” she said. “We were punished for nine years that were more like 90 years.”
