What Caused the Death of Mahsa Amini? Her Role in Iranian Protests

Mahsa Amini, also known as Jina Amini was a 22-year-old Iranian woman who died on 16th September 2022 in an Iranian hospital in Tehran, Iran under some suspicious circumstances on the basis of not following Islamic Hijab related laws according to the moral police of Iran. 

Arrest 

Mahsa was arrested by the Guidance Patrol at the entry of the Shahid Haghani Expressway in Tehran while with her family. Later she was transferred to the custody of Moral Security. Mahsa’s brother was with her when the arrest happened, he was told that she would be taken to a detention centre and be released in under an hour. Later her brother was informed that Mahsa had a heart attack along with a brain seizure at the police station. 

Death

From what is told by Mahsa’s cousins through some co-detainees as witnesses, they were informed that she was tortured and insulted while she was in the van and started to lose vision on arrival at the police station, where she fainted and two hours after this arrest she was taken to the Kasra hospital.

It took the ambulance 30 minutes to get to the station and then another 90 minutes to get to the hospital. For the following two days. Mahsa was in a coma at Kasra Hospital in Tehran. A journalist named, Niloofar Hamedi brought out the story of her coma to the public, although she too was later arrested.

Aftermath

The eyewitnesses said that Mahsa was severely beaten up by the police in the van, only a while after her arrest. Till 17th September 2022, the Iranian police was denying having beaten her, and continued to say that she suffered from a sudden heart failure, they also revealed the grounds of her arrest to be that her headscarf was not being worn properly and that she was wearing tight pants. 

By 19th September 2022, the police presented CCTV footage which showed a woman that they identified as Amini to divert the matter to something else, more such attempts were made by linking her death to her pre-existing medical condition of having had a brain tumour at the age of 8 but it obviously had no relation because that was removed successfully. Mahsa also did not have any medical conditions and was a healthy woman, she was considered shy and quite by her neighbouring people and was apolitical. 

Later, some leaked medical scans were observed by people separately and revealed that she had had a cerebral haemorrhage or stroke. Although all this too was being tried to cover up by all officials and her family was not even allowed to see her or her dead body anytime after her arrest. 

Protests Followed by Death 

The death of Mahsa was naturally followed by protests from all over the world, in Iran itself, protests were being done by women of all ages and colours, including school kids, with the slogans of ‘death to the dictator’ etc. Women in Iran took off their headscarves in order to show rebellion, and a funeral ceremony of Mahsa was avoided in order to avoid any crown gathering, regardless of which protesters peacefully gathered near her grave as a form of another protest till almost 40 days after her death too.

Protesters on different instances have been reported to be treated badly, by the usage of pepper spray and even the use of fire, in the case of the protestors near her grave and even live ammunition has been reported from some sources.

Although Iran has been facing a media shutdown since 21st September 2022 because of the protests and that is how the Iranian government often responds to any disturbances in the country, the story made it to social media and people all around the world started cutting their hair off in support of the cause. Protests in other countries have also been observed and on Twitter, the hashtag #MahsaAmini become one of the most used hashtags in Persian with the number of tweets and retweets exceeding 80 million.  

Iranian People

A letter also surfaced on the internet from an isolated con-named account of a group of people, some of which claim to be Mahsa’s known people, identities unknown. The letter talks to the world about the overall situation of Iran, which went from being a happy country to one where its citizens are treated like disposable objects under the control of the Islamic Fascist Regime.

It shares a deep and disturbing overview of how intense the periodic disturbances in Iran have been and how people are dying, suffering, standing and falling down continuously and still nothing changes. 

Current Situation

Words about the deaths of many people started to be heard in mid-October about Iran. It is said that the continuous use of ammunition has led many people to die and hundreds arrested. The latest information reveals that the Iranian government may be taking a decision to give the death penalty to all the arrested girls and women who took part in the protests which would constitute to a major mass killing to be observed in quite a lot of years. 

According to Iranian law, the responsibility of law already falls in the hands of women from the age of 9 and that of men at 14, so mass killing would not even be considered a juvenile death penalty according to Iranian law. As worse as it gets, it might be happening right now, but the lack of help and communication is making things hard for anybody to help. 

Written By: Sofia Choudhary 

Edited By: Nidhi Jha