Protests have intensified this week in Iran over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for allegedly wearing her headscarf too loosely
about the recent rise of the Iranian morality police attacking women over loose hijabs, and has called for an independent investigation into Amini’s death.
Yeganeh Mafaher, a 24-year-old activist born in Iran who lives in the U.S. now, tells TIME that although conservative dress and hijab laws were very strictly enforced after the revolution in 1979, these days, some Iranians don’t take it so seriously. “Throughout the years, you can even see it in photos of Iran. Women started making the hijab looser and looser,” she says.
“What you see is people who are fed up with a regime,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, Director of the NGO, Iran Human Rights, tells TIME. “Not only do they take away people’s civil and political rights, but they also interfere in people’s most private aspects of life, like what you wear.” Activists have emphasized that the protests aren’t just about women’s rights or eradicating hijab laws, but rather about the harsh realities of living under an authoritarian regime. Mafaher still has many loved ones in Iran and says, “they’ve been affected by this their entire lives.”
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