2022 Iranian Protests: 78 days, 90,000 protesters - 550 killed, 30000 detained. Mahsa Amini, a 22 year old Persian woman, died of brutality by Iranian morality police on September 16, 2022 for allegedly violating the country's mandatory hijab law. Her death resulted in the largest protest of Iran in more than a decade where female demonstrators took to removing their hijabs or publicly cutting their hair. This is also the first female led protest in Iran for gender equality. Amini's death represents thousands of women who have been punished by Iranian authorities as a result of choosing to live freely. The protests against mandatory hijab rules have been sporadically going on since 1979, the year the rules were enacted. However, unfortunately, it took an innocent death for the country and the world to awaken and raise voice against it. How many more Mahsa Aminis will have to give up their lives to finally bring this heinous policing to an end ?

One evening, a 14 year old boy and his little brother accompanied their father to a celebration dinner for his professional achievements. To their surprise, they reached a giant warehouse, where around 50 little girls between the age of 10-17 years were weaving rugs on wooden frames since morning. As it is their job was punishing, the owner of this sweatshop would also hit the girls with cables if he found them chit-chatting. In the corner of this sweatshop, was a dining hall, where food was getting served in traditional Persian style, that is, separate dining for men and women partitioned by a curtain or a wall. But strangely, around 10-12 young girls were serving food to this group of elderly men, with no partition of any kind. After dining, these guests, famous and successful in their professions, one by one, pointed towards the girl of their choice who then accompanied him to a secluded room. These young innocent girls were getting raped by the guests in those rooms.

This is a real life incident from the year 1982. A 5 year-old boy was playing in a park in Tehran, with his mother Anita who was in her 20s, and aunt who was a teenager. Both the women had applied cosmetic products, as any woman would usually do - some pink nail polish, light red lipstick, and sandals in their feet. Suddenly, the Islamic Police Revolutionary guards started approaching them, one of them took away his mother and aunt in a van, while another soldier pointed a machine gun at the boy’s forehead and said, “Your mother is a whore, your aunt is going to become a prostitute. We are going to fix them to be daughters of Allah.” They drove both the women to an unmarked barren land surrounded by the morality police, while the boy cried alone in the streets. After an hour, his mother and aunt came back bleeding out of their faces and feet. The guards had removed his mother’s lipstick using cotton balls with shattered glass and razor blades in it. The guards pulled out his aunt’s nails and put her bleeding feet in a sack full of rats and cockroaches to infect. Their family was blackmailed and threatened by the guards for months.

On September 20, 2022, 16-year-old Iranian teenager Nika Shakarami disappeared in Tehran during the 2022 Iranian protests. She was kidnapped, held, and questioned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for a week, and then briefly detained at the Evin Prison, a prison which has frequently been accused of systematically raping and torturing prisoners. Her family was informed of her death ten days later. She died under suspicious circumstances involving violence by security forces. Nika's aunt claimed in an interview that her nose had been completely destroyed and that her skull had been "broken and disintegrated from multiple blows of a hard object", perhaps a baton. Under duress, Shakarami's family agreed not to hold a public funeral, and yet didn’t get to perform her burial. Her body was stolen by the security forces and secretly buried elsewhere. Images of Shakarami's tombstone show this poem carved on it: "Gave birth to you with blood and pain, Gave you back to the motherland".

Farah Pahlavi, is the widow of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and was successively the Queen and Empress (Shahbanu) of Iran from 1959 to 1979. The naming of a woman as a regent was highly unusual for a Middle Eastern or Muslim monarchy. From the beginning of her reign, the Empress took an active interest in promoting culture and the arts in Iran. Through her patronage, numerous organisations were created and fostered to further her ambition of bringing historical and contemporary Iranian Art to prominence. She worked for many charities, and founded Iran's first American-style university. She also facilitated the buying-back of Iranian antiquities from museums abroad. The Queen was actively involved in government affairs where it concerned issues and causes that interested her, particularly in the areas of women's rights and cultural development. During the Islamic Cultural revolution of 1979, both Shahbanu and the Shah left the country under the threat of a death sentence. Post Shah’s death in 1980 due to illness, Shahbanu has continued to live in exile in various countries. “Light will overcome the darkness, and Iran will rise from her ashes. They should keep strong,” she says.

Farrokhroo Parsa was an Iranian physician, educator and parliamentarian. She petitioned for suffrage for Iran's women as a member of parliament. She was also a driving force for legislation that amended the existing laws concerning women and family. She served as Minister of Education, and was the first female in the history of Iran to hold a cabinet position. Parsa was an outspoken supporter of women's rights in Iran. She was executed by a firing squad on May 8, 1980 in Tehran, at the outset of the Islamic Cultural Revolution of 1979. In her last letter from prison, Farrokhroo Parsa wrote to her children: "I am prepared to receive death with open arms rather than live in shame by being forced to be veiled. I am not going to bow to those who expect me to express regret for fifty years of my efforts for equality between men and women. I am not prepared to wear the chador and step back in history."