Author’s note: I initially wrote this piece for The Gauntlet, but the editor I pitched the story to never got back to me. Regardless, I think this topic is deeply important and deserves limelight regardless. Though I expanded the piece to 1000 words as I don’t have the same length constraints here, this may be stylistically a little different than my usual writing here, as I wrote this initially according to Canadian Press Style standards.
Like a match waiting to be struck, the deplorable conditions of Iranian women at-large make it tragic but unsurprising that Jina Amini’s death at the hands of Iranian Morality Police set off widespread protests across the country.
Amini, 22, was arrested on Sept. 14 for not fully covering her hair. Two hours later, she was rushed to the hospital comatose and mutilated, contradicting the regime’s story of her suddenly suffering a heart attack and seizure while in custody. She died two days later.
Between her grievous injuries, Amini’s previous clean slate of health, and a lack of transparency from the Iranians on her death and autopsy, everything reeks of a cover-up of the Morality Police murdering a woman with her whole life ahead of her all because of how she dressed.
Jina Amini’s murder, let alone arrest, is unconscionably despicable. Indeed, as the twistedly Orwellian name of Morality Police to describe murderers gives away, Jina’s death is hardly the regime’s only sin. The clerics oppressively confine women's ability to self-determine everything from how they dress or where they go, rigs elections to empower Ebrahim Raisi, a murderous zealot hardliner who engages in Holocaust denial, all while the Iranian regime continue to waste lives and money on abating terrorism and fascism in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. The Iranian theocracy is brutally authoritarian and the sooner it terminates, the better, for both Iranians and the entire Middle East.
Despite the clear and widespread desire for change within Iran, the regime remains rigid. This current round of protests are among the most intense in modern Iranian history, but anti-government protests have been frequent since 2009; already this year were major protests over the cost of living. Dissatisfaction runs deep in Iranian society, with single-issue protests regularly blowing up into protesting against the clerical system altogether. The Iranian government is completely uncompromising, granting no concessions and instead opting to end protests through bloodshed. The 2019 protests were met with a nationwide internet blackout, shielding the government’s subsequent massacre of over a thousand. With God on your side, the theocrats so willingly separate butcher regular people; they have divine backing, so why would they give in?
The one dimension that the media – both Western and Middle Eastern media – have failed to aptly capture about the protests is that though Jina Amini possessed an Iranian passport, she was also Kurdish. Unquestionably, her murder is the result of doctrinal misogyny run amok, but her murder is also the culmination of over a century of official discrimination against Kurds by the Iranian state.
Most, in the media and among regular people, fail the basic task of correctly naming Jina Amini. Mahsa was her legal name, but only because Kurdish names are illegal in Iran. As seen on campus at my University, the slogan of saying or remembering her name is well-intentioned, yet most people don’t know what her real name was despite insisting that we say her name. Well, I will. Her name was Jina Amini, and she deserves the dignity of not having her Kurdishness erased.
Indeed, with over 30 million Kurds across the world, there is a comparable number of Kurds as there are Canadians, yet Kurds lack their own state and have little in the way of collective self-determination. The Kurdish proverb of “no friends but the mountains” still poignantly describes the situation of the Kurdish people; they are numerous and spread out chiefly in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, but every move towards liberation is met with overwhelming hostility by Arabs, Persians and Turks alike, and apathy from the West.
Kurds refer to the areas they populate in northwestern Iran as Rojhilatê, the easternmost province of Kurdistan. An estimated 8-10 million live in Rojhilatê, making Iranian Kurds the third largest ethnic group in Iran and the second largest Kurdish community in the world. Though Persians form a majority of Iran’s population and Farsi is the only official language, almost half of all Iranians are not Persian. Kurds make up a huge part of that group.
Despite their size, the condition of Iranian Kurds is dire, as Iran’s Kurds have no political representation or autonomy in the Islamic Republic. After the 1979 Revolution, the subsequent Kurdish rebellion was put down draconianly — over 10,000 people lost their lives and thousands more were displaced from their homes.
Soon after in the devastating Iran-Iraq War, both Iran and Iraq used Kurdish paramilitaries to try to destabilize each other. Rather than being treated as a people with inalienable human rights and dignity, they were opportunistically used as a pawn by dictators. When Iran and Iraq agreed to a ceasefire after eight years of war, over a million people were dead, many of them Kurds. Iraqi Kurds, who aligned with Iran in the war, faced a genocidal campaign by Saddam afterwards, and Iranian Kurds who aligned with Saddam faced an even greater clampdown.
Iranian Kurds remain unfree today. Kurds are discriminated against over religion, employment, education, housing and language. Over 200,000 Iranian Kurds are illiterate. Even more live in poverty. Political opposition by Kurds is met with imprisonment, torture or execution.
Everyone should be rooting for the protestors to succeed in creating a new, free, democratic, and equal Iran. I would love to see Khamanei and his gang of theocrat thugs strung up like Mussolini in Tehran. But if the protests succeed, the new Iran must not only be a new Iran for Persians only; it must grant all citizens the right to self-determination regardless of ethnicity, including Iranian Kurds like Jina Amini. As an outsider, it seems apparent that only an independent Kurdistan, carved out of Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria can truly give Kurds the voice they have lacked for so long, yet this should not be unilaterally imposed on them. Instead, they must be able to choose, and the discrimination against Kurds, in Iran and elsewhere, has to end. Perhaps Jina Amini can be a symbol not only for the struggle for a better tomorrow for Iranian women, but also for the Kurds of Rojhilatê.