Video from Iran shows hundreds gathered in protest at the funeral for a 22-year-old whom police arrested and allegedly beaten to death for violating strict laws requiring women to cover their hair, prompting further calls to deny Iran’s president entry to the U.S. as he prepares to speak at the U.N. General Assembly this week.
Iran’s morality police arrested Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman, on Sept. 14 near a train station while visiting the capital with her family. No explanation was offered, but witnesses said that the police accused Amini of failing to properly wear her hijab (headscarf).
The police rushed Amini to hospital shortly after she fell into a coma during her detention, claiming that she had collapsed while in custody, but her family said they saw evidence of beatings. Amini died three days later, but the police deny that Amini was killed.
Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General, told Fox News Digital that the colleagues in the U.N. office in Iran were “deeply saddened” by Amini’s death and extend their “heartfelt condolences.” He did not confirm whether the secretary-general would raise the topic during a potential meeting with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi this week.
Her death prompted waves of protests over the weekend, with women gathering in the streets to remove their hijab or cut their hair. Other reports indicate that mobile internet has been cut in several areas of Tehran as the protests continue.
According to an Iranian news Twitter account 1500 Tasvir, “A group of women in Tehran took the hijab off and blocked the street to protest the murder of Masha Amini by the Hijab Police of the Islamic Republic, chanting ‘ISIS, ISIS.’”
Ashok Swain, a professor at Uppsalla University in Sweden, posted a video on Twitter and noted that protestors shouted “death to the dictator” at Amini’s funeral, calling the women “simply inspirational.”
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Additional video posted online Monday showed Iran security forces beating protestors in Tehran near the detention center where Amini was held prior to falling into her coma. Anti-riot forces also sprayed protestors in an effort to clear them from the streets.
“Mahsa Amini represents every young Iranian man and woman,” Foreign Desk Editor-in-Chief Lisa Daftari told Fox News Digital. “Her senseless death is symbolic not only of the regime’s barbaric treatment of its citizens, but she represents the many victims whose lives have been taken.”
“You see protests erupting all over Iran, because this is just one of many stories that are untold,” Daftari continued. “The Iranian people are sending a clear message to the global community and to the U.S. in particular to stop normalizing the inhumane actions of this regime.”
Amini’s brother Kiarash told the Iran Wire news organization that he filed a complaint at the courthouse in Tehran and wanted to “tell everyone in Iran what happened.”
Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy for Iran, criticized Amini’s death, calling it “appalling.”
“The regime is now claiming that Mahsa suffered a cardiac event while in detention, but it is clear to all that she suffered from serious injuries from the beating she received during arrest,” Banafsheh Zand, an Iranian-American researcher, told Fox News Digital. “My question to Western modern women is, is emancipation for thee and not for me?”
