Hejab

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Exactly what happened to Armita Geravand, 16, is unclear, but the circumstances have fueled accusations that agents enforcing Iran’s dress code must have harmed her.

Video:
Security footage broadcast by state media showed the girl being carried unconscious off a subway train, but footage from inside the train has not been released.

The 16-year-old girl, her short black hair uncovered, entered a subway car in Tehran early Sunday on her way to school, security camera footage broadcast by Iran’s state television showed. Minutes later, she was dragged out unconscious and laid on the train platform.

All week, the girl, Armita Geravand, has been in a coma, guarded by security agents in the intensive care unit of a military hospital in Tehran and evoking broad comparisons with Mahsa Amini, who died last year at 22 in the custody of the morality police after being accused of violating Iran’s hijab rules, which require women to cover their hair.

Exactly what happened to Armita on Sunday is not clear, and the government has not released footage from inside the train that would reveal what made the teenager collapse.

But the news of another young woman in a coma under murky circumstances — another girl, another metro station, another hospital, another grief-stricken family — was enough to stir outrage in Iran and fuel accusations that the government’s hijab agents must have harmed her.

Ms. Amini’s death last year set off a nationwide uprising, led by women and girls, demanding an end to Iran’s clerical theocracy. The “Mahsa movement,” as it was called, morphed into the most serious challenge to the legitimacy of the ruling clerics since they took power in 1979. In crushing the protests, the government killed more than 500 people, including teenagers and children, and arrested tens of thousands of demonstrators.

ImageA woman in a poncho stands atop a car, looking away, toward a huge crowd of people and a caravan of vehicles.

Thousands of protesters heading last October to the cemetery in western Iran where Mahsa Amini, who died in the custody of Iran’s morality police, was buried.Credit...via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Farzad Seifikaran, a journalist with Radio Zamaneh who first reported the story about Armita on Sunday, interviewed four people familiar with the episode. Those interviewed told him that Armita and two of her friends, who were also not covering their hair, argued with officers enforcing hijab rules, Mr. Seifikaran said, and that one of them pushed Armita.

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She fell and hit her head on a metal object on the train and suffered cerebral hemorrhaging, Mr. Seifikaran said the people told him.

The government says she fainted because of a drop in blood sugar after skipping breakfast. Masoud Dorosti, head of the Tehran Metro Operating Company, told the Iranian news media that footage from its cameras showed no sign of a verbal or physical confrontation between passengers and municipality employees.

The state news agency, IRNA, published a video of Armita’s parents looking shellshocked and repeating the government narrative. “My daughter, I think her blood pressure, I don’t know what, I think, they say that her blood pressure dropped then she fell down and her head hit the edge of the metro,” said her mother, Shahin Ahmadi, stumbling on her words as her voice shook.

Her father, Ahmad Geravand, looked down, arms folded, as she spoke. Mr. Geravand said Armita had been healthy and did not use any medications, and he asked for prayers for her.

Armita lives in a working-class neighborhood of western Tehran and is an art student at a vocational art and design high school, her classmate and relatives told Mr. Seifikaran. She has a passion for painting and pursued taekwondo training semiprofessionally, they said.

The government’s lack of openness and the tight security at the air force hospital have contributed to the suspicions that the authorities had a hand in harming Armita. Anger has spilled out this week on social media, with people denouncing what they see as the government’s brutality.

“Transparency means all the security agents leave Fajr Air Force Hospital and surrounding areas and journalists be allowed to report on what happened to the 16-year-old girl,” wrote Mohsen Borhani, a lawyer in Tehran, on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter.

The authorities eventually stifled street protests over Ms. Amini’s death, and they violently squelched commemorations of its anniversary last month. But sporadic small protests still erupted in several cities, with people chanting, “Death to the dictator.”

Many women and girls across Iran have continued to defy the mandatory hijab rule by letting their hair show in public. This collective act of civil disobedience has been risky, as the government has come up with new ways to catch and punish such women, including the use of facial recognition software.

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Two women in white shirts who do not appear to be wearing head scarves facing away from the camera and walking down a Tehran street.

Many Iranian women still defy the authorities’ conservative dress code.Credit...Vahid Salemi/Associated Press

A group of Iranian teachers’ unions said in a statement on Wednesday that the Education Ministry’s security director had visited Armita’s high school and warned teachers and staff that they would be fired if they spoke about her, and that her classmates were threatened to keep them silent.

Security agents have swarmed the hospital, locked down the ward where Armita is kept and threatened to arrest family members and her classmates if they spoke to the news media, according to rights groups and activists. Maryam Lotfi, a journalist for the daily newspaper Shargh who went to the hospital on Sunday, was arrested as she was interviewing Armita’s mother and detained for 24 hours, according to her colleagues and editors.

“We can confirm that Armita’s family is under immense pressure to adhere to the state’s narrative, while she lies unconscious and guarded by state security personnel in a military hospital with all visitors banned,” said Jasmin Ramsey, deputy director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, an independent advocacy group based in New York. “If her case were as straightforward as they claim, why all the restrictions and secrecy?”

In Iran, parents of teenage girls are once again anxious about their safety. During the uprising last year, Iranian security forces systematically targeted not only adults but teenagers and children who were staging a revolt in schools, launching raids that intimidated students and detaining up to 1,000 minors.

Image
A grainy image of people in black and brown fleeing outdoors.

An image taken from video purportedly shows children fleeing security forces last year in the Iranian city of Khash, in Sistan-Baluchistan Province.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Many parents and students were already fearful because of another unexplained trauma: Hundreds of schoolgirls in dozens of cities were hospitalized early this year with respiratory and neurological symptoms that the authorities said were partly caused by deliberate attacks with toxic chemicals.

“As a mother, I am feeling very stressed these days,” said Fariba, 46, whose daughter is a student in Karaj, near Tehran, and who asked that her last name not be published out of fear of retribution. “I cannot let my daughter leave the house alone; I am afraid that something bad would happen to her. She does not want to wear a hijab. So many of our girls these days have become extremely brave.”

The plight of Iran’s women and their courage in pushing for their rights have reverberated widely, both within the country and abroad. Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, was among those reacting to the news about Armita, posting Wednesday on X, “Once again a young woman in Iran is fighting for her life.”

“Shocked and concerned about reports that Iran’s so-called morality police have assaulted 16-year-old Armita Geravand,” Abram Paley, the U.S. deputy special envoy on Iran, wrote on X. “We continue to stand with the brave people of Iran and work with the world to hold the regime accountable for its abuses.”

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanaani, responded to the Western criticism on Thursday, posting on X a rejection of “interventionist & biased remarks” and “insincere concern over Iranian women & girls.”

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/worl ... avand.html

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The death of Armita Geravand comes after word of her injuries fueled outrage because she was so young and because of previous cases in which women have been brutalized for protesting dress codes.



Station footage showing Armita Geravand being dragged out of a subway car in Tehran this month.Credit...Iranian State Television, via Associated Press

Armita Geravand, a 16-year-old Iranian high school student, has died weeks after she collapsed and fell into a coma following what many believe was an encounter over not covering her hair in public.

Ms. Geravand’s death, nearly a month after she was believed to have been shoved by officers for not wearing a head scarf on a subway car in Tehran, was announced by Iran’s state news agency IRNA on Saturday. That report repeated the government line that Ms. Geravand’s coma had been caused by hitting her head after a fainting spell.

Ms. Geravand’s case has fueled outrage among many Iranians because of her young age and because of previous cases in which hundreds of women have been brutalized by the morality police for not wearing head scarves. In Ms. Geravand’s case, the Iranian authorities released only limited footage of the incident.

The circumstances of her case have prompted comparisons with Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman whose death in police custody in September 2022 led to the most significant wave of anti-government protests since the Iranian revolution in 1979. Ms. Amini’s death touched off widespread, monthslong demonstrations in which Iranian women publicly violated dress codes, mostly by eschewing head scarves, in huge protests that rattled the country.

With international and domestic pressure mounting, Iran said in December that it was abolishing its morality police. But this summer, the government created a special unit to enforce laws in Iran that require women to cover their hair with a hijab and wear loosefitting robes.

Station camera footage released by the government captured only part of the incident involving Ms. Geravand. The video shows her entering the subway car with friends without wearing a head scarf. It then shows her friends pulling her unconscious body back onto the platform. Footage from inside the subway car was not released.

The story was reported by Farzad Seifikaran, a journalist with Zamaneh Media, an independent Persian-language news site, based in Amsterdam. He said people familiar with the incident had told him that Ms. Geravand and two of her friends had argued with officers enforcing the hijab rule and that one of them had pushed Ms. Geravand, who hit her head on a metal object as she fell.

This week, state media reported that Ms. Geravand had been pronounced brain dead.

The Iranian authorities have tried to combat the quickly spreading reports that claimed they were responsible for Ms. Geravand’s injuries.

“The incident was immediately hijacked by anti-Iran media outlets, which claimed that Armita was brutally beaten by the police for wearing inappropriate clothing,” the English website of IRNA wrote on Saturday when announcing her death.

Ms. Geravand was taken to hospital on Oct. 1. Neither family nor friends were allowed to visit, and the police arrested a journalist who tried to see her in the hospital, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group that has tracked Ms. Geravand’s case.

Ms. Geravand’s parents have given an interview, which was widely seen as coerced, in which they repeated the official narrative that she had hit her head after fainting.

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This country is banning hijabs despite its 98% Muslim population


The population of Tajikistan is 98% Muslim (Picture: Rex/Getty)

A country which is almost entirely Muslim is set to ban the hijab as it is ‘alien’ to its culture.

Tajikistan has long had an unofficial ban on the religious wear in public institutions, but a new draft law would ban the importation, selling, wearing and advertisement of the hijab.

Those who break the new law could also be fined heavily, from $740 for individuals to $5,400 for legal entities.

Tajik lawmaker Mavludakhon Mirzoeva told Radio Free Europe the draft bill includes a ban on clothes deemed ‘foreign’ to Tajik culture.

Though controversial, the bill is expected to be approved and signed into law by President Emomali Rahmon.

In recent years, special task forces worked to enforce the ban. Police also often raided marketplaces to arrest those breaking the unofficial ban.


A lawmaker said the hijab was ‘foreign’ to Tajik culture (Picture: AFP)

Tajikistan also previously banned bushy beards, and forced many men to shave theirs against their will.

Late last year, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom said of Tajikistan: ‘As part of an effort to maintain complete, authoritarian control over all segments of society, the government of Tajikistan commits systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.

‘The Tajik government has placed undue restrictions on all facets of religious practice, including prayer, celebrations, education, and rituals.’

Which other countries ban the hijab?

France, Denmark, Belgium, Sri Lanka, Bulgaria, China, India, Germany and Turkey are just some of the countries that have banned the hijab in some form.

In 2022, authorities temporarily closed all Islamic bookstores in the capital for ‘violating the religion law’.

In 2023, Abdullo Rahmonzoda, the head of the Committee for Youth and Sports, suggested that bloggers shouldn’t grow beards.

His reasoning was ‘promoting’ them online could be seen as sympathising with ‘terrorist groups’ and ‘threatening national security’.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/th ... 54e32&ei=7

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Iran’s Onerous Hijab Law for Women Is Now a Campaign Issue

In a sign that a women-led movement has gained ground, all of the men running for president have distanced themselves from the harsh tactics used to enforce mandatory hijab.


Women in Tehran on Thursday, a week before the presidential election, none wearing the required hijab covering their hair.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

By Farnaz Fassihi and Leily Nikounazar
June 24, 2024
Iranian officials insisted for decades that the law requiring women to cover their hair and dress modestly was sacrosanct and not even worth discussion. They dismissed the struggle by women who challenged the law as a symptom of Western meddling.

Now, as Iran holds a presidential election this week, the issue of mandatory hijab, as the hair covering is known, has become a hot campaign topic. And all six of the men running, five of them conservative, have sought to distance themselves from the methods of enforcing the law, which include violence, arrests and monetary fines.

“Elections aside, politics aside, under no circumstances should we treat Iranian women with such cruelty,” Mustafa Pourmohammadi, a conservative presidential candidate and cleric with senior roles in intelligence, said in a round-table discussion on state television last week. He has also said that government officials should be punished over the hijab law because it was their duty to educate women about why they should wear hijab, not violently enforce it.

The hijab has long been a symbol of religious identity but has also been a political tool in Iran. And women have resisted the law, in different ways, ever since it went into effect after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

It is unlikely that the law will be annulled, and it remains unclear whether a new president can soften enforcement. Different administrations have adopted looser or stricter approaches to hijab. Ebrahim Raisi, the president whose death in a helicopter crash in May prompted emergency elections, had imposed some of the harshest crackdowns on women.

Still, some women’s rights activists and analysts in Iran say forcing the issue to the table during elections is in itself an accomplishment. It shows that the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement of civil disobedience, which began nearly two years ago, has become too big to ignore.

Women and girls are walking on the streets, eating in restaurants, going to work and riding public transportation wearing dresses, crop tops and skirts, and leaving their hair uncovered. In doing so, they take great risks, as the morality police lurk on street corners to arrest women defying the rules.

Fatemeh Hassani, 42, a sociologist in Tehran, said in a telephone interview that the fact that hijab and morality police had become an election issue showed that women, through their determination and resistance, had been “effective in influencing the country’s domestic policies and forcing the government to recognize their demands for more rights.”

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A woman wearing jeans and a striped shirt walks in a garden outside, her long red hair uncovered.

Iranians last week in Tehran.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Women represent about half of Iran’s 61 million eligible voters. Although voter apathy is high among critics of the government, opposition to the hijab law and the morality police is no longer confined to them. It has transcended gender, religious and class lines, and now some of the loudest complaints come from religious people and conservatives, the backbone of the government’s constituents.

During a live televised debate on Friday on social issues, women and the hijab dominated the four-hour event. The issue has also surfaced in campaign videos that appear to be targeting female voters and rallies in cities around the country.

In Isfahan, video from a rally for one candidate, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, showed an 18-year-old girl, her long black hair flowing around her shoulders, taking the microphone. She said she represented the young generation and first-time voters, the generation that stands up for its demands, and asked, “Do you have the power to confront the morality police, the hijab monitors and the autonomous security forces?”

Dr. Pezeshkian is the lone candidate for the reform faction, which favors more social openness and engagement with the West. He has been the most forceful voice against the mandatory hijab and the morality police, and the only candidate to clearly say he opposes telling anyone how to dress.

“We will not be able to force women to wear the hijab,” he said during the debate on Friday. “Will arrests, confrontations and shameful behavior resolve this issue?”

Not all female voters are convinced that a change is coming. Even with the condemnations by the candidates, the morality police still patrol the streets around Tehran and other big cities daily with vans and police cars. They sometimes stop women and give them a verbal notice, and sometimes they arrest them. Several videos on social media have shown women being beaten and dragged into vans.

“I don’t believe them. The president has no authority over this issue because it’s a red line for the Islamic Republic,” Sephideh, a 32-year-old teacher from Tehran, said in a telephone interview, asking that her last name not be published to avoid possible retribution. “But in previous elections, the issue of hijab was abandoned, and now they are all talking about it,” she added, concluding that women’s struggle “will win.”

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People gathered in front a poster showing an Iranian presidential candidate.

Supporters of the presidential candidate Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian this month in Tehran.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Iranian women who do not believe in wearing hijab have been fighting the law for as long as it has existed since after the 1979 Islamic revolution. Back then, clerics who toppled the monarchy imposed Islamic sharia laws on all aspects of social life, from women’s attire to mingling of genders and drinking alcohol.

The Women, Life, Freedom movement began in 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, in the custody of the morality police, who had arrested her on accusations of violating the hijab law. Outraged women and girls led nationwide protests burning their headscarves, dancing in the streets and chanting for women to be free. The uprising spread in scope, with demands for an end to clerical rule. The government ultimately crushed the protests with violence.

In December, Iran announced it had abolished the morality police but then put them back on the streets in April, after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said that observing the hijab law was a moral and political obligation.

Iran’s Parliament has been working on legislation that would impose punitive damages on women who disobey the rules, including denying them social services, imposing travel bans and permitting the judiciary to withdraw funds from their bank accounts.

Mr. Pourmohammadi, the cleric candidate, said during one debate that if elected, he would repeal the legislation. Gen. Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, the front-runner conservative candidate and current speaker of the Parliament, said in the debate that the legislation still needed work and that “you cannot achieve anything with violence, tension and without respect — all of this is condemned.”

In recent months, facial recognition software, both in traffic surveillance cameras and drones, has been used to identify hijab scofflaws, who then are texted a summons to appear in court, according to three women interviewed who had received such messages and a report by Amnesty International.

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Pedestrians walking on a Tehran street, including a woman not wearing a hijab.

Iranians walking past a huge ballot box in Tehran on Thursday, a week before presidential election.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Nahid, 62, a resident of Tehran who did not want her last name published for fear of retribution, said that when she was summoned the judge showed her a photograph of her near a mall, her blond hair uncovered, and that she was fined.

Another woman, Minoo, 52, who wears hijab, said in an interview that her car had been confiscated for two weeks because traffic cameras caught her 20-year-old daughter driving while not wearing one. She said the police had also made her pay the parking fee for the impounded car.

Enforcement of the law has brought widespread condemnation abroad from right groups and Western countries.

A teenager on her way to school in October collapsed in the subway, after reports of an argument with a hijab police officer, and died in the hospital.

Fahimeh, a 41-year-old fashion blogger, said in an interview in Tehran that whoever becomes the next president would have no bearing on the fight for more rights. “We women don’t wait for their permission to remove our hijab; right now already, many don’t wear hijab.”

Narges Mohammadi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is the most prominent women’s rights activist in Iran and currently serving a 10-year prison sentence, issued a statement on Saturday describing the election as a sham.

“How can you, while holding a sword, gallows, weapons and prisons against the people with one hand, place a ballot box in front of the same people with the other hand, and deceitfully and falsely call them to the polls?” Ms. Mohammadi said.


Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization, and also covers Iran and the shadow war between Iran and Israel. She is based in New York. More about Farnaz Fassihi

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/worl ... 778d3e6de3