Woman Dies Of Heart Attack In Iran During Scuffle Over Hijab
Maryam Sinaiee
Iran International
A 59-year-old Iranian woman died of cardiac arrest in hospital Monday after a fight broke out when vigilantes assaulted a member of her family over hijab.
Iran International
A 59-year-old Iranian woman died of cardiac arrest in hospital Monday after a fight broke out when vigilantes assaulted a member of her family over hijab.
A video, posted on social media after the incident shows the woman, whose name has not been disclosed, on the ground and scuffles between people on the scene at the parking lot of Mahan Garden, a tourist attraction 25km from Kerman, capital of the Eastern Kerman Province. The woman died at a hospital later.
Social media users have reported that the deceased and her family members were visitors from the southern port city of Bandar Abbas.
The video was taken from inside a bus which carried the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) affiliated Basij militia members and their families who were in Kerman to visit the grave of slain Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani.
Apparently, the Basij members ordered a member of the woman’s family to cover her hair, leading to an argument and a scuffle.
“Let her die!”, one of the Basij women on the bus exclaims when another one points out that the woman on the ground has died.
Scuffle between Basijis and people at Mahan Garden’s parking after a woman collapsed.
Ali Babaei, governor of Kerman, confirmed the death of the 59-year-old woman and injury of several others in the group fight, which he claimed had been “personal”. He added that those responsible for the incident were arrested by the police but did not offer further details.
A judiciary official, Yousef Sobhani, has said that an investigation has been launched into the incident and “any possible crime would be seriously dealt with.”
The footage was initially widely shared by hardliners on social media because it showed a few people attacking the Basijis and throwing stones at the bus but was later removed from most accounts as it appeared to have backfired.
In the past few weeks, hardliners have intensified their efforts to enforce veiling laws more forcefully to put a stop to women’s increasing defiance of the compulsory hijab. Since popular protests after Mahsa Amini died at the hands of the morality police in September, many women walk in the streets without hijab. The clerical regime is determined not to allow unveiled women to appear outside their homes and prevent more women from flouting hijab rules in as the hot summer season arrives.
Such efforts include encouragement of hardliners to take the matter into their own hands and carry out their religious duty of “calling to virtue and forbidding wrong”. This includes shutting businesses for their customers’ defiance of hijab, and “hijab warning” text messages sent by the police to nearly everyone who uses a mobile phone, including some men.
Warning ‘hijab-less’ women, however, in several cases has gone well beyond “verbal” and ended in violence.
Emergency responders attending to a woman who had a panic attack during a hijab fight at shopping arcade in Babol.
A video from the CCTV of a convenience store in Shandiz near the religious city of Mashhad went viral on social media in early April that showed a man dumping a large tub of yogurt on the head of a ‘hijab-less’ woman and her mother, after an argument as he demanded from her to cover her head.
Some of the people present on the scene came to the defense of the mother and daughter. The attacker was also a member of the Basij.
Another video that became viral on social media in mid-April showed a young woman having a panic attack at a shopping arcade in Babol in northern Iran. The incident happened as a fight broke out when Basij militia tried to arrest some shopkeepers over hijab and fired their guns into the air during the scuffle.
The police later denied that shots had been fired or the hijab incident had caused the young woman’s panic attack.
Hijab incidents are now becoming a daily occurrence. At Tehran University on Monday students staged a rally outside the campus security office after a fight broke out between them and guards who had used violence against female students over hijab. The security detained two female students but later released them.
Many say on social media that women will not allow to be bullied again into wearing the hijab.
In an interview with Iran International TV Saturday evening, Esmaeilion who had not directly mentioned the exiled Prince as the reason for leaving the alliance a day earlier, named him as the person with whom he had disagreements and left the group.
Prince Reza Pahlavi has not responded to Esmaeilion’s accusations yet.
Esmaeilion claimed that the “near absolute majority” of the members of the alliance sought the formation of specialized committees and drawing up articles of association for the alliance, but the Prince “resisted” such initiatives and instead demanded that the alliance should only give support to political organizations formed outside it.
“Another problem was that discussions within the group leaked out … The tweets that Mr Pahlavi posted in the past two, three weeks transferred internal discussions outside although we were still discussing the issues,” he said.
Prince Reza Pahlavi said in an April 4 tweet that he had submitted a letter containing the names of additional prospective members to give a voice to those who were unrepresented in the alliance. In another tweet on April 10 he reported that members of the group had not come to a consensus regarding the said candidates.
Calling this a setback, the Prince had also said that he would work with other individuals and groups “to amplify the voices of all Iranians, adding that he would not limit himself “to one group” and stand behind “all groups who believe in ensuring Iran's territorial integrity, who want human rights for the Iranian people, and who believe the future government of Iran should be a secular democracy, the form of which should be decided by the Iranian people.”
Prince Reza Pahlavi has not publicly named his proposed candidates but some of his his supporters who call themselves ‘constitutionalists’ allege that Esmaeilion opposed the inclusion of football legend Ali Karimi at the time of announcement of their association.
They allege that Esmaeilion opposed the inclusion of London-based journalist Amir Taheri and Germany-based musician and activist Shahin Najafi.
There is also the accusation that Esmaeilion resigned because of Prince Pahlavi’s recent trip to Israel.
In his interview with Iran International, however, Esmaeilion denied the allegation that he had announced his resignation Friday, immediately after Prince Reza Pahlavi’s visit to Israel, “to undermine his achievements.”
Some constitutional monarchists seem pleased by Esmaeilion’s departure from the alliance. “From now on fresh blood will enter [the veins] of the pragmatic front of the opposition. This is a very positive development!” one of the supporters of the exiled Prince tweeted.
“Esmaeilion’s departure from the alliance has another aspect, namely, if the project of restoring constitutional and parliamentary monarchy in the future, is realized, it will again result in autocracy,” another tweet said.
It also accused monarchists of not having the capability of cooperating with those in favor of a future republic. “The problem is in the theory of monarchy, which does not prepare the ground for pluralism.”
In recent years, the former crown prince did not lay claim to the throne, and at least on one occasion he said his own desirable government would be a republic rather than a monarchy, but many of his supporters, who always refer to him affectionately as ‘The Prince’ see him as the future king of the country.
NOTE: In the earlier version of this report it was erroneously said that Prince Reza Pahlavi had proposed US-based Amir-Hossein Etemadi as a candidate for the Council.