A portrait of Mahsa Amini held up throughout a rally in Washington on October 1, 2022. Amini, additionally identified by her Kurdish identify Zina, died in police custody in Iran final yr, sparking world protests towards the nation’s conservative Islamic theocracy. . She acquired the European Union’s highest human rights award on Thursday, October 19, 2023.Cliff Owen/AP Hide caption
Toggle caption Cliff Owen/AP
A portrait of Mahsa Amini held up throughout a rally in Washington on October 1, 2022. Amini, additionally identified by her Kurdish identify Zina, died in police custody in Iran final yr, sparking world protests towards the nation’s conservative Islamic theocracy. . She acquired the European Union’s highest human rights award on Thursday, October 19, 2023.
Cliff Owen/AP
The household of Martha Amini, the 22-year-old girl who sparked protests throughout Iran in September 2022, has been banned from touring to France to obtain a human rights award in her identify.
Amini’s father, mom and siblings had been prevented from boarding a aircraft at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport on Saturday, in accordance with the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). They had been prohibited from touring and had been later knowledgeable that their passports had been confiscated by safety forces.
In an interview with London-based Iran International, Murtha’s father, Amjad Amini, stated the household was given no purpose for the journey ban.
“I stated, ‘Do I have to know why and why?’ And nobody answered,” Amini stated.
The household’s lawyer Saleh Nikbakht was allowed to journey to Strasbourg, France, to obtain the distinguished Sakharov Freedom of Thought Award.
Mahsa Amini, additionally identified by her Kurdish identify “Zina,” died within the custody of Iran’s ethical police. She was accused of violating Iran’s strict gown code for girls, often known as the hijab. Her demise triggered protests that swept the nation for months, drawing Iranians from throughout socio-economic and spiritual backgrounds to the streets.
activist silence
Gissou Nia, an Iranian-American human rights lawyer and Atlantic Council analyst, advised NPR that journey bans are widespread in Iran. This is commonly used to forestall activists from going overseas the place they might entice media consideration for his or her trigger.
“They know that what occurred at Mahsa Amini is an issue for them, they usually need the general public to suppose that it’s not a mirrored image of systemic issues,” Nia stated. Told.
“But this [travel ban] This clearly exhibits that they know this isn’t the case they usually don’t desire their households’ voices to be heard. ”
Amini’s father, Amjad, was additionally detained on the anniversary of her demise, as giant protests and rallies had been thwarted by heavy safety deployment.
The slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” that was coined within the protests after Amini’s demise was not only a rallying cry towards obligatory hijab and ladies’s rights. It has come to signify calls for for main reforms throughout Iran, which has been dominated by a hardline cleric for the reason that 1979 Islamic revolution.
Iranians face fixed repression on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, LGBTQ rights, gown etiquette, public expressions of affection, and dancing and enjoying music in public.
HRANA says at the very least 19,000 individuals have been arrested throughout the nation for the reason that protests. At least seven individuals have been executed for his or her involvement within the protests, in accordance with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Several others, together with rappers Toumaji Salehi and Saman Yassin, stay in jail and face doable execution.
Despite the repression, Mahsa Amini’s identify and the slogan born from her demise stay synonymous with the human rights motion in Iran.
At Sunday’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway, the award was offered to human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, one other Iranian girl who stays imprisoned in Iran.
Muhammadi’s daughter, Kiana Rahmani, started her speech on the ceremony by praising her mom’s work for “zan, zendegi, azadi” (which suggests “ladies, life and freedom” in Persian).