A portrait of Mahsa Amini is held throughout a rally in Washington, on Oct. 1, 2022. Amini, who additionally glided by her Kurdish identify, Jina, died in police custody in Iran final 12 months, sparking worldwide protests towards the nation’s conservative Islamic theocracy. She was awarded the European Union’s high human rights prize on Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023.
Cliff Owen/AP
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Cliff Owen/AP
A portrait of Mahsa Amini is held throughout a rally in Washington, on Oct. 1, 2022. Amini, who additionally glided by her Kurdish identify, Jina, died in police custody in Iran final 12 months, sparking worldwide protests towards the nation’s conservative Islamic theocracy. She was awarded the European Union’s high human rights prize on Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023.
Cliff Owen/AP
The household of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year outdated lady whose September 2022 killing sparked countrywide protests in Iran, has been prohibited from touring to France to gather a human rights award in her identify.
In response to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists Information Company (HRANA), Amini’s father, mom and brother have been prevented from boarding a flight at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport on Saturday. They have been knowledgeable they have been banned from touring and their passports have been then confiscated by safety forces.
In an interview with London-based Iran Worldwide, Mahsa’s father, Amjad Amini, mentioned that the household was not given a cause for the journey ban.
”I mentioned ’We now have to know why, for what cause?’ However nobody gave us reply,” Amini mentioned.
He added he’d knowledgeable the authorities of the household’s plan to journey a month upfront however was not made conscious of a journey ban till they have been on the airport.
The household’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, was allowed to journey to Strasbourg, France, to gather the celebrated Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Mahsa Amini, who additionally glided by her Kurdish identify, Jina, died whereas within the custody of Iran’s Morality Police. She was accused of violating Iran’s strict costume code for girls, often known as the hijab. He dying was a catalyst for protests that swept the nation for months, and introduced Iranians from throughout socio-economic and non secular backgrounds to the streets.
Silencing activists
Using journey bans is frequent in Iran, Gissou Nia, an Iranian-American human rights lawyer and analyst on the Atlantic Council informed NPR. It is usually used to forestall activists from going abroad, the place they could get extra media consideration for his or her trigger.
”And there is a heighted sensitivity that her household’s presence would shine a lightweight on the scenario in Iran,” mentioned Nia, including Iranian authorities clearly wished to keep away from the optics of a bereaved household talking on a world stage about how the brutality of Iran’s Morality Police prompted the dying of their cherished one.
”They know what occurred with Mahsa Amini is problematic for them, they usually actually need folks to suppose that it wasn’t reflective of a systemic drawback,” Nia mentioned.
”However this [travel ban] clearly exhibits that they know that this is not the case — they do not need the household’s voices to be heard.”
Amini’s father, Amjad, was additionally detained on the anniversary of her dying when an enormous safety presence prevented massive protests and rallies.
”Girl, Life, Freedom,” the slogan coined in protests after Amini’s dying, wasn’t only a rallying cry towards the enforcement of the hijab or for girls’s rights. It got here to signify a requirement for main reforms throughout Iran, which has been dominated by hardline clerics for the reason that Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Iranians face fixed crackdowns on free speech, press freedom, LGBTQ rights, manners of costume, pubic shows of affection, dancing or performing music in public, and extra.
Since these protests, in line with HRANA, at the least 19,000 have been arrested within the nation. At the very least seven folks have been executed for his or her ties to the protests, in line with the UN’s Workplace of the Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights. A number of others, together with rappers Toomaj Salehi and Saman Yasin, stay imprisoned and face the potential of execution.
Regardless of the crackdowns, Mahsa Amini’s identify and the slogan born from her dying stay synonymous with the human rights motion in Iran.
At Sunday’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, in Oslo, Norway, the prize was awarded to a different Iranian lady, human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who stays imprisoned in Iran.
Mohammadi’s daughter, Kiana Rahmani, began a speech on the ceremony honoring her mom’s work with ”Zan, Zendegi, Azadi” — Farsi for ”Girl, Life, Freedom.”