![]() ![]() That's how he meets Nelly, an actress in a family troupe that includes her mother (Kristen Scott Thomas) and two older sisters (Perdita Weeks, Amada Hale). The battle is over freedom of choice.Īhilya Mehta, 27, is an entrepreneur-in-residence at Nua, former co-founder of Aara Health, and has been in women’s wellness for three yearsĬonnect with us on facebook.As the film reminds us throughout, Dickens (Fiennes) was a man not only of the printed page but of the stage as well, a buoyant performer and crafter of occasional theatrical entertainments. Ultimately, these protests are not only contesting the legitimacy of the hijab law, but the government’s power to enforce it against a majority of the population’s will. Most recently, I read that the protesters are calling for the end of the totalitarian government and the death of dictatorship. However, when a society is offered neither freedom nor security, one cannot blame them for questioning their fealty to a leader. Francis Fukuyama, renowned political scientist, has written about the crux of identity politics being a choice between freedom and security. It is about a top-down change in governance as a result of a bottom-up movement. Women organised the protests, led them, and held their ground by simply showing up and remaining persistent.īut this fight is not just about women. Within a short period of time, the protests reached more than 85+ Iranian cities, big and small. The kerosene may have been spilled long ago, but Mahsa Amini was the match that lit the fire. In 2020, conservative government officials “either banned outspoken women from running or opened judicial cases against them to discourage them to stand for elections.” These protests are the consequences of years of women’s efforts. Women were treated as a threat to society, when all they wanted was just and equal treatment. The new leadership’s support for women’s rights slowly transformed into a desire to criminalise women’s activism. Despite their efforts, the mandate passed successfully. Thus, only weeks after the revolution concluded in 1979, women took to the streets to protest the then-rumoured mandatory hijab law. Alas, the intended respect was mismanaged into forced servility. ” Consequently, and in thanks, he invoked the hijab as the symbol of the revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini asserted that the “future of depended on. The hijab law was instituted in 1983 after the Iranian Revolution, in which women participated. Her death at their hands was seen by many as the culmination of antiquated ideologies and unhinged dictatorial ambitions. Another incident shows a mother throwing herself in front of a morality police van, screaming, “My daughter is sick, please do not take her!”Īn aspiring student from a small town in Iran, Mahsa may not have known of the rigidity of the morality police in Tehran. In one case, they arrested a woman who later appeared on state television, bruised and beaten, after her visit to a detention centre. Mahsa’s death came after several incidents earlier in the summer of the morality police arresting other young women. An image of her while in hospital went viral: she was in a coma, with tubes in her mouth and nose blood dripped out of her ear and down her neck. Her family joined her when she was admitted to the hospital. Mahsa lost consciousness a day after entering the centre. Amini was sent to a re-education class at the Vozara detention centre. Although dressed in a long, loose, black robe and scarf, she was in violation of the hijab law. She encountered the morality police, an agency that enforces religious obedience, while on the subway with her brother. Mahsa Amini had travelled to Tehran to visit relatives. In a country ranked 143 out of 146 for the gender equality gap, these women are fighting for rights that go against the Iranian government’s fundamental beliefs. ![]() ![]() Women are at the forefront of these protests-as they need to be. The protests instigated by Mahsa Amini’s death are the greatest challenge the Iranian government has faced in decades. Nevertheless, I cannot fathom writing about gender issues without addressing the abysmal treatment of women in Iran. I told myself I would not write about politics. Her brutal death triggered a series of protests that, by October 17, had killed 215 people. September 16 is the day that 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, an Iranian woman, was murdered. ![]()
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