On September 16 of this year, a 22-year-old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died in a Tehran hospital after she had been arrested by Iranian morality police for not wearing a hijab, as Iranian law requires. Her death was believed by her relatives to be due to torture and a beating that she received at the hands of the morality police. Massive protests began in reaction to Amini’s death.
In the ensuing weeks, some of the protests have focused on the morality rules imposed by the government, with women baring their heads or cutting their hair in defiance of the rules. But the protests have gone beyond simply demanding changes to those laws. Protesters have been demanding the end of the regime headed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Predictably, the Iranian regime has cracked down hard on protesters, arresting and torturing many of them. That, however, has led to protests as well. For example, last week a national teachers’ union, the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, called for a sit-in of teachers across the country on Sunday and Monday because of the deaths and detentions of students at the hands of regime forces.
Observers around the world have shown their support, with protests of thousands and tens of thousands of people taking place in cities in the US and Europe, including Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Berlin this past weekend. Iranians living abroad came together in large groups to attend those demonstrations.
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