Explainers
Another Mahsa Amini? How ‘assault’ of a teen girl has put Iran’s morality police under scanner again
A 16-year-old girl is in a coma after being allegedly assaulted by Iran’s controversial ‘morality police’ at a metro station in Tehran for not wearing the hijab. The incident has evoked memories of Mahsa Amini’s death last year which sparked nationwide protests
FP Explainers Last Updated:October 04, 2023 14:12:04 IST 
Women walk on streets in Iran's Tehran without a hijab on 5 August 2023. AP File Photo
A 16-year-old girl in Iran’s capital Tehran is in a coma after being allegedly assaulted by the country’s controversial “morality police”. The incident has brought back memories of Mahsa Amini’s death last year which sparked nationwide protests.
The teen is currently being treated at Fajr Air Force Hospital in Tehran under heavy security.
What happened in Tehran? Why is the incident reminiscent of Amini’s death? Let’s take a closer look.
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Student ‘assaulted’ in Tehran metro
According to the Kurdish-focused Hengaw Organisation for Human Rights, the teen was subjected to a “severe physical assault” after being apprehended and attacked by female morality police officers at Tehran’s Shohada metro station on Sunday.
The girl, identified as Armita Garawand, was badly injured after being targeted for not wearing a hijab (headscarf), reported The Telegraph citing the rights group.
The victim is originally from Kermanshah, a city in Kurdish-dominated western Iran, but resides in Tehran, the rights group said, as per the British newspaper.
According to Hengaw, currently, there are “no visits allowed” for Garawand who is hospitalised, “not even from her family”.
Maryam Lotfi, a journalist from the Shargh daily newspaper, was briefly detained when she tried to visit the hospital, as per an AFP report.
The rights organisation also shared what it said were pictures of Garawand lying in a hospital bed and her head and neck covered in bandages. A feeding tube can be seen attached to her mouth.
According to the news site IranWire, based outside Iran, the student sustained a “head injury” after allegedly being pushed by the officers.
London-based Iranian journalist Farzad Seifikaran wrote on X on 2 October that a schoolgirl and her friends were stopped by police for allegedly not wearing hijabs. Seifikaran said that the girl was pushed down by the police, which led to her hitting her head and losing consciousness.
Authorities, the girl’s parents deny assault
Iranian authorities claimed that the teen “fainted” due to low blood pressure which resulted in Garawand hitting the side of the metro carriage. They have also denied any involvement of the security forces, AFP reported.
Masood Dorosti, managing director of the Tehran subway system, claimed there was not “any verbal or physical conflict” between the teen and “passengers or metro executives”.
“Some rumours about a confrontation with metro agents … are not true and CCTV footage refutes this claim,” Dorosti told state news agency IRNA.
Fars, the Iranian government’s official news agency, published an interview with the student’s parents, who denied their child was attacked.
“We have checked all the videos and it has been proven for us that this incident was an accident. We request people to pray for our child’s recovery,” the girl’s father can be heard saying, as per The Guardian.
“As they say, her blood pressure has dropped,” her mother claimed, as per ABC News.
However, not everyone is convinced by the parent’s denial. Many pointed out that Iranian authorities have released “forced” interviews in the past with family members of victims killed or hurt by security forces.
There are accusations that Garawand’s parents were coerced into speaking, reported The Guardian.
Footage of the incident
Iran’s state-run media released edited footage of the girl, apparently unconscious, being carried out of the train carriage by her friends. The grainy video does not show if the girls were wearing hijabs or not. As ABC News noted, no video from inside the train carriage has yet been released.
A purported video of the incident shows the teen being “pushed” into the metro by female police agents and then pulled out of the metro car, in possibly an unconscious state, is also doing the rounds on social media, reported AFP.
Mahsa Amini’s death
The presumed video of the incident has caused outrage on social media, with the footage being shared widely in Iran.
The incident has come just over a year after Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, whose death in police custody after being arrested for allegedly not complying with the mandatory hijab rules had triggered historic protests in Iran. The authorities had claimed Amini had a neurological disorder that caused her to collapse inside a police station in Tehran.
The officials said she died of a heart attack, but her family asserted that Amini was fatally beaten by the police, reported CBS News.
The anti-government protests in the aftermath of the tragedy made the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” popular across the world. The demonstrations, largely led by young women in Iran, lasted many months. Thousands were arrested and hundreds killed in a severe crackdown by Iranian authorities.
Since Amini’s death and protests, Iran has tightened its hijab laws and renewed efforts to punish women defying the stringent dress rules.
In August, Tehran’s mayor’s Alireza Zakani launched new patrols on the city’s metro system to ensure the enforcement of hijab rules. As per The Telegraph, many reports have come to light since then of “violent confrontations” between officers and women who do not comply with the hijab rules.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), based in New York, said women and girls “face increased violence, arbitrary arrests and heightened discrimination after the Islamic Republic re-activated its forced-veiling police patrols”, reported AFP.
Iran’s Parliament passed a “hijab and chastity” bill last month that would punish women with a 10-year prison sentence for not wearing the hijab. The new legislation is yet to get the nod of Iran’s Guardian Council.
Will this spark another wave of demonstrations?
The latest incident has once again put the spotlight on Iran’s treatment of women who do not adhere to the dress rules.
Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad shared purported pictures of Garawand lying in a hospital bed and wrote, “My heart is broken. Right on the first anniversary of the murder of #MahsaAmini in the hand of morality police, this horrifying images, emerging of #ArmitaGaravand, the 16 year old girl who is in a coma in Iran after a reported confrontation with the morality police in Tehran. I’m crying…”.
Iran Human Rights (IHR) also took to X and called for the country’s “forced-hijab law” to be “revoked”.
As per The Guardian, there are accusations on social media that Iranian officials are trying to cover up the incident just like they allegedly did after Amini’s death.
“The story they [the regime] has made up for Armita Geravand is completely similar to the story of Mahsa Jina Amini. ‘Her pressure dropped and her head hit somewhere, and she is still in a coma,’” activist Soran Mansournia wrote on X.
It’s a year since Amini’s death and women’s rights only appear to have dwindled in Iran. Whether the incident will spur another wave of protests or not remains to be seen.
With inputs from agencies
