Will Mahsa’s murder be the spark that brings down Iran’s women haters?

IT’S safe to say you don’t find too many men identifying as women in Iran. For some strange reason they’re not exactly clamouring to be treated as women, to dress as women and use women’s safe spaces and avail of women’s privileges, because women don’t have safe spaces or privileges in Iran.

Much of the country’s civil law openly prioritises men over women, who comprise less than 20% of the paid workforce. Women are officially second-class citizens: if a pedestrian is struck by a car, for example, the compensation is halved if the victim is female.

And while men can dress as they please, women can be prosecuted, lashed or imprisoned for up to 15 years for not keeping their heads and bodies covered at all times in public. They can even be killed for it.

Last week, on Tuesday September 14, a 22-year-old woman called Mahsa Amini was walking in central Tehran with her brother, since women walking alone are presumed to be prostitutes.

The morality police, on a passing patrol, stopped and arrested Mahsa for wearing her hijab too loosely, allowing some of her hair to be visible. They told her brother that they were detaining her for ‘educational and orientation classes’ on the correct wearing of the hijab, and she was put into a police van.

Once inside, her head was banged hard against the side of the vehicle. Waiting outside the detention centre, her brother and other witnesses heard her screaming, and eventually an ambulance came to take her to hospital. She was in a coma, and died three days later.

The authorities claimed the healthy young woman had suffered a heart attack. Her family was not allowed to view her body, but her father glimpsed her feet and saw they were badly bruised.

Mahsa Amini was undoubtedly murdered by the notoriously women-hating Islamist regime, with what the police clearly expected would be complete impunity. After all, women are simply chattels in Iran, little better than domestic animals.

This time, though, the women of Iran didn’t follow the script.

Since Mahsa’s death, there have been widespread protests, both in Iran and internationally, against the savagely totalitarian, antiwomen state.

Inside the country in particular, women have shown extraordinary bravery in burning their hijabs and cutting their hair in the streets. Women have been filmed sitting, in western clothes without veils or coverings, in front of the morality police, defying them to act. Some footage has even shown police officers fleeing from a raging crowd and, significantly, men have joined women in rioting and protesting.

Could Mahsa’s murder be the small spark that starts the forest fire? Sadly, there’s no reason to be optimistic.

After the unspeakably horrific rape and murder of a young medical student on a bus in India in 2012, the authorities there were rattled by countrywide protests and promised tougher sentencing, up to the death penalty, for rape. There’s little point in having tough sentencing, though, if the crimes are not properly investigated, and where the accused is of a higher caste than his victim, that rarely happens.

There are still six rapes a day in Delhi alone, and tens of thousands across the entire subcontinent each year, but in 2021 just 3,700 rapists were convicted in all of India.

The Iranian authorities are also promising a full investigation of Mahsa’s death, though it’s little more than a bid to quell the civil unrest. At least six protesters have already been shot dead by police, so there’s scant evidence of a will to address their heavy-handed tactics.

And yet even the most repressive, unaccountable states can’t hold their ground against public opinion forever, especially as social media makes it harder for them to control information, and enables protesters to rally and mobilise: if people see images of riots, and of police being routed by an angry mob, they’re more likely to be emboldened to take to the streets themselves, and once opposition to the clear injustices inflicted on half the population take hold, there’s no telling where it might end.

In Russia, too, the Kremlin is struggling to suppress images of protests against Putin’s planned mobilisation of 300,000 conscripts.

The numbers protesting are small so far, certainly compared to the thousands attempting to flee the country to escape the draft, but again social media could help empower opposition to the crazed dictator’s murderous plans. Across Russia, towns and villages have watched their sons come home from a ‘special military operation’ in body-bags and, like the women of Iran, Putin’s people surely have a breaking point.

We can only hope that, in both countries, we’re seeing the first tiny cracks in the strongmen’s defences.