Jina ‘Mahsa’ Amini was a beautiful young Kurdish girl who grew up in the small village of Saqqez in Northwestern Iran.[i] She was a driven woman who ran a successful retail shop that sold traditional Kurdish clothing. Jina enjoyed promoting new Kurdish fashions, but her real passion was for medicine. Saqqez was a lovely place, but her dreams were too big for such a small town. Tehran, on the other hand, filled her with promise. A university there recently granted her a full a scholarship to study microbiology and medicine. It was an incredible opportunity that she couldn’t wait to take advantage of.
She would get her chance soon. Her family took a train to the capital in September to visit her brother Kiarash who lived there and drop her off at the university. It wasn’t time to start classes yet though, and she longed to see the city. Her younger brother Kiarash was happy to serve as her tour guide. They left their family in their hotel to play tourist. Ab-o-Atash park was their first stop on their list. They walked through the beautiful botanical gardens there and stopped at the amphitheater to watch a musical performance. It was nearly dark by the time they finished. Jina and Kiaresh hurried for the Shahid Haghani metro station to meet up with their parents for dinner.
A large, bearded man emerged from a nearby white and green van in front of the metro station. His black uniform identified him as an officer of the Gasht-e-Ershad morality police. He called her over. Her pants were much too tight. Her hijab was loose, and he could see some of her hair. It was unacceptable, immodest, and immoral. Jina was terrified and confused. She struggled to explain herself. He slapped her in the face. It seemed extreme to arrest someone over some fitted pants and a lock of visible hair. She protested. More men piled out of the van to teach her some respect. One of them knocked her to the ground. She curled into a ball to protect herself from their long black batons. Kiaresh tried to help his sister, but the police tossed him aside and drug Amini into their van for re-education.
The police took her to the Voraza morality detention center. They tortured the poor girl there while her father Amjad waited helplessly outside. The morality police wouldn’t let him see his daughter. They wouldn’t even tell him what she had done or how she was doing until she slipped into a coma. They transferred her to the Kasra Hospital. The police explained to Amjad that Jina fainted during her re-education and was unresponsive. They would continue her punishment after her condition improved. It didn’t. Jina Amini died on September 13th, just five days before her 22nd birthday.[ii] The official autopsy determined that the cause of death was a heart attack brought on by pre-existing health conditions and the stress of her arrest.[iii]
In the past, this could have been the end of this story. Iran enacts strict controls over the media, the telecommunications industry, and the internet to dominate the information space and help control their people. It is almost impossible to challenge the government’s version of the truth. Some people, however, are brave enough to risk their lives to expose the truth. The journalist Niloofar Hamedi is one of those people. She snuck into the Kasra hospital and took pictures of Amini on her hospital bed. She posted these pictures on Twitter and the story shot across social media. The government quickly arrested Hamedi and deleted the post, but it was too late. The hashtag #MahsaAmini was the most popular hashtag in the world during the months of September and October.
It is very difficult to erase a story on social media, even in country like Iran that has very strong control of their internet. Iran needed to change the narrative of what happened instead. The government officially announced that the police treated Amini humanely and she died because of a pre-existing medical condition. This didn’t work, especially after Amini’s father posted online about her abuse. Next, they accused Amini of treason. Her cousin Erfan Mortezaei is a peshmerga fighter and Kurdish dissident living in exile in Iraq. Iran used this to paint Amini as a revolutionary who came to Tehran to sow dissent against the government. The Iranian Army attacked Kurdish bases in Iraq with drone strikes and precision missiles in supposed retaliation for her actions.[iv] There is no connection between these Amini and these groups, but it reinforced the narrative that Iran was pushing.
Niloofar Hamedi, and her colleague Elaheh Mohammadi, were next on the target list. The Islamic Republic’s Intelligence Ministry and the Intelligence Organization of the Revolutionary Guard reported that the two journalists were working with the CIA to overthrow the government. They uncovered ‘proof’ that the CIA trained Niloufar Hamedi how to fabricate evidence of abuse and publish false accusations against the regime on social media. Mohammadi, on the other hand, was working for the CIA to incite riots in Saqqez under the pretense of reporting on Amini’s funeral there.[v] The IRGC announced that the reports were pure lies engineered to denounce the legitimacy of the Iranian republic. According to Iran, Amini’s death was the tragic result of a frail woman whose heart gave out under the stress of arrest.
Their next step was to suppress all information that ran counter to the government’s narrative. First, they arrested the two journalists and placed them in solitary confinement.[vi] Next, they started by removing all traces of Hamedi and Mohammadi’s reports from the internet. The Iranian government used Twitter and Facebook’s social media guidelines to flag and remove posts about Amini’s mistreatment. Many of these posts included violent language that Iran could use to justify their removal. These companies later adjusted their policies to limit censorship on posts about Amini, so the Iranian government banned these applications outright.
The Iranian government operates a domestic intranet, called the National Information Network, that can block most social media websites and messaging applications. This includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Signal, and Twitter. Social media applications are one of the best ways available for protestors to share information, synchronize operations, and coordinate protests. Iranians can use Virtual Private Networks to bypass this censorship, but the regime is skilled at identifying and disabling these VPNs.[vii] The nonprofit organization Netblocks reports that the Iranian government blocked a third of internet users in Tehran during the initial stages of the protests.[viii] Iran Mobile Communications company, Iran’s largest mobile phone company with 60 million users, went offline soon after the protests started.[ix] Iran is now blocking internet access for most users between 4 PM and midnight to limit coordination between protestors.
The protesters on the streets is for freedom but there is an equally important battle occurring online for information. Hacktivists inside and outside the country are fighting the Iranian government on the internet. Anonymous is supporting the effort by bringing down government websites with Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks and claims to have infiltrated the Iranian parliament. Other hackers have gathered information about Iranian government officials and released it to the public.[x] US based engineers are posting ways for the protestors to use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to bypass government filters and censorship.[xi] Some VPN companies are distributing their software directly to dissidents and waiving all fees in Iran. Others are working with Iranians to establish proxy servers inside of Iran that enables people to obfuscate their traffic from the government and connect to western social media applications.
Jina Amini dreamt of becoming a doctor one day because she wanted to heal people. The Morality Police tried to kill this dream with their batons but in a way, it will survive beyond her death. Her story inspired thousands of Iranians to protest government oppression and state sponsored misogyny. Time will tell if the protests will force Iran to grant its people more freedom but its clear that Amini has irrevocably changed her country. She left Saqqez to help her townspeople but in the end she may end up healing her nation with her sacrifice.
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[i] Jina is a Kurdish name and the government only recognized her by her Persian name Mahsa.
[ii] Hafezi, P. (October, 2022) Iranian Woman whose Death led Mass Protests was Shy and Avoided Politics. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iranian-woman-whose-death-led-mass-protests-was-shy-avoided-politics-2022-09-28/
[iii] BBC News (September, 2022) Iran: Mahsa Amini’s father accuses authorities of a cover-up. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-62998231
[iv] Gritten D. (September, 2022) Thirteen killed in Iraq as Iran attacks Kurdish groups blamed for protests
BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63058096
[v] Deepa, P. (October, 2022) Iran Accuses Journalists who Reported Mahsa Aminis Death of Spyin for the CIA. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/oct/29/iran-accuses-journalists-who-reported-mahsa-aminis-death-of-spying-for-cia
[vi] Deepa, P. (October, 2022) Iran Accuses Journalists who Reported Mahsa Aminis Death of Spyin for the CIA. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/oct/29/iran-accuses-journalists-who-reported-mahsa-aminis-death-of-spying-for-cia
[vii] Mahoozi, S. (September, 2022) ‘The internet is dead in Iran’: Protests targeted by shutdown
Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/iran-internet-shutdown-idINL8N2ZM0AS
[viii] Netblocks (September, 2022) Internet disrupted in Iran amid protests over death of Mahsa Amini
[ix] McCallum, S. (September, 2022) Iran unrest: What’s going on with Iran and the internet? BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62996100
[x] Browne, R. and Turak, N. (October, 2022) How Anonymous and Other Hacking Groups are aiding Protests IN Iran. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/05/how-anonymous-and-other-hacking-groups-are-aiding-protests-in-iran.html
[xi] Khazani, O. and Bulos, N. (September, 2022) In protests over death of Mahsa Amini, internet is key to planning. Can Iran block access? LA Times. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-09-28/for-iranian-protesters-a-digital-double-edged-sword
