Last week a 22 year old Kurdish woman died while in the custody of the Morality Police, a section of Iran’s police force which arrests women for wearing hijabs the wrong way or other non approved clothing. The 22 year old, named Amini, died in custody after being arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab in an “improper” way. This death sparked nationwide outrage and protest for the past six days. These protests have since turned violent with police force firing on the crowds chanting ‘death to the dictator’ and ‘women, life, freedom’ with metal pellets, tear gas and water ca
nnons. There have been thirty one civilian deaths since the protests began.
I think we are definitely going to see strong support behind the protesters of this movement all over the world, both from governments and from civilians. I, personally, hope that the protests are successful and the morality police are abolished. The idea that there should be a police force completely dedicated to oppressing women is shockingly immoral and I think that with women’s rights becoming a more and more popular and addressed idea world wide we will likely see widespread support for the civilians in Iran and not the government and police.
In class we recently mentioned that the way countries treat their female citizens is a good indicator of how developed they are. In this case Iran has a whole branch of its police force dedicated to the oppression of women which would lead me to believe that Iran has very low development.