Dear Comrades

We would like to inform you that Mahsa (Zhina) amini, A 22-year-old woman has died in an Iranian hospital days after being detained by the regime’s morality police for allegedly not complying with the country’s islamic hijab regulations.

Mahsa (Zhina) Amini was travelling with her family from Kurdistan to the capital, Tehran, to visit relatives when she was reportedly arrested for failing to meet the country’s strict rules on women’s dress. Witnesses reported that Amini was beaten in the police van.
The news comes weeks after Iran’s hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, ordered a crackdown on women’s rights and called for stricter enforcement of the country’s mandatory dress code, which has required all women to wear the hijab head-covering since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

It is worth mentioning that Her family were told during her arrest that she would be released after a ‘re-education session’.
The police later said that Amini had suffered a heart attack. Amini’s family disputed this, however, and said she was healthy and had not been experiencing any health problems.
Photographs of Amini lying in the hospital bed in a coma with bandages around her head and breathing tubes have circulated on social media.
Her hospitalisation and death drew condemnation from Iranian celebrities and politicians.

Raisi signed a decree on 15 August clamping down on women’s dress and stipulating harsher punishments for violating the strict code, both in public and online.
Women have been arrested across the country after the national “hijab and chastity day” declared on 12 July. One of the women was Sepideh Rashno, a writer and artist who was reportedly beaten and tortured in custody before making a forced apology on television.

Now the cities of Kurdistan and Iran have come to the streets to protest this intentional murder, and civil activists have declared September 19 as a day of general strike.
These days, as the youth organization of Iran and Kurdistan, we ask you to condemn these behaviors of the Islamic Republic, and we also ask you and all allied organizations to support the rights of the oppressed people of Iran and Kurdistan.

Democratic Youth Union of East Kurdistan

Secretariat

Peshawa Alipour

17/09/2022