A newspaper with a cover picture of Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being arrested by Iranian morality police is seen in Tehran, Iran, September 18, 2022. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS/
Violence erupted in Iran’s capital as security forces cracked down on the biggest public backlash against the country’s dress code for women since the 1979 revolution that ushered in the laws.
Riot police used water cannon and fired tear gas to disperse crowds in Tehran after hundreds of demonstrators skirmished with security forces on Monday. The outpouring of public anger was sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who fell into a coma and died after being detained by "morality police” last week because of how she was dressed.
Videos posted on social media showed protesters chanting "death to the dictator,” "women, life, freedom” and "I’ll kill whoever killed my sister” against a backdrop of armed officers and black police vans. In some clips members of the public can be seen retaliating at members of a voluntary, plain-clothed militia who are run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and often deployed to infiltrate and sometimes violently break up protests.
Other footage included a woman standing on a car bonnet and setting fire to her headscarf, as well as a burning dumpster and police motorbike in flames. The videos couldn’t be independently verified by Bloomberg.
The unrest is some of the most violent in Iran since November 2019 protests over fuel prices and it comes as Iran’s hardline President Ebrahim Raisi -- a cleric who has spent much of his career helping to define the country’s Islamic laws -- makes his first physical appearance at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
He’ll be accompanied by Iran’s foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator, who are expected to meet diplomats on the sidelines to address the latest deadlock facing talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
Amini’s death will likely overshadow Raisi’s UN visit as the chorus of voices condemning the incident grows louder. On Tuesday, the UN’s acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif, urged an impartial investigation.
Earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a tweet "Mahsa Amini should be alive today. Instead, the United States and the Iranian people mourn her. We call on the Iranian government to end its systemic persecution of women and to allow peaceful protest.”
There were also rallies at major universities in Tehran, Tasnim reported, while clashes broke out over the weekend in Amini’s hometown of Saghez in Kurdistan province in northwest Iran, where she was buried on Saturday.
In a statement, Tehran police said Amini suffered "heart failure” on Friday while in a coma following her detention by officers of the city’s so-called morality unit.
Police chief General Hossein Rahimi called her death an "unfortunate incident,” ruling out any wrongdoing by his personnel, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. Iran’s parliament has said it launched an investigation and was seeking to reform laws governing how the morality police patrols are used and deployed.
