Putin plays with f ire in his new doctrine
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Iran’s state media announced on Saturday that an Iranian teenage girl who was not wearing a head scarf and was injured in an incident on Tehran’s Metro. She has reportedly passed away.
Following weeks in a coma in Tehran, the one-year anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s murder, and the widespread demonstrations it provoked, comes the death of Armita Geravand.
Since women in Tehran and other cities continue to oppose Iran’s rule requiring them to wear headscarves, or hijabs, as a symbol of their dissatisfaction with the country’s theocracy, Geravand’s injuries on October 1 and her passing now pose a threat to rekindle widespread unrest.
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Geravand’s passing was announced by Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, without mentioning the broader controversy surrounding the headscarf law.
It is still unclear what transpired in the few seconds after Armita Geravand boarded the train on October 1 that led to her death.
A friend of Armita Geravand told Iranian state television that she hit her head on the station’s platform, and then the soundless footage aired by the broadcaster from outside of the car somehow remained blocked by a bystander. Moments later, her dead body was carried off.
Geravand’s parents were shown in official TV film claiming that their daughter’s injuries may have been caused by a fall, a blood pressure problem, or possibly both. The specifics of Geravand’s injuries’ cause have not been confirmed yet.
Foreign activists have claimed that because Geravand was not donning the hijab, she might have been shoved or abused. In addition, they called for an independent investigation by the UN fact-finding mission into Iran, pointing out that the state TV had broadcast hundreds of forced confessions in the past and that the theocracy has used pressure on the relatives of its victims.
Geravand’s injury occurred as lawmakers pushed to impose even harsher sanctions for people who disobey the mandatory head covering and as Iran reinstated its morality police, whose opponents claim are responsible for Amini’s murder. International condemnation of Iran’s treatment of women and the country’s statute requiring the headscarf increased in response to Geravand’s injuries.
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