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DUBAI – A confrontation with Iran’s moral police that left a young girl in a coma is stoking new distrust and anger toward the country’s leadership and drawing foreign criticism.
The incident is reminiscent of the death of Mahsa Amini in custody a year ago for dress code violations, which sparked months of protests in Iran. On Friday, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Narges Mohammadi, a women’s rights activist imprisoned in Iran who has repeatedly spoken out about the draconian enforcement of headscarf wearing.
Armita Geravand, 16, was on her way to school on a Tehran subway with two friends when she was stopped for failing to adhere to the country’s strict Islamic dress code, which requires women to cover their hair.
The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner is Narges Mohammadi, Iranian activist
Iranian officials say what happened next was that she fainted due to low blood sugar. But activists claim she was targeted by the moral police. While videos of her walking through the subway station with friends were released, footage of the actual altercation in the subway car was not released.
Following reports of Geravand’s injuries this week, activists called on the government to allow journalists to speak to her friends and family. Instead, state media published video interviews with her parents, both of whom appeared sad and shocked.
“I think they said her blood pressure went down,” Geravand’s mother, Shahin Ahmadi, said to the camera, her words halting and sometimes difficult to understand. “She fell to the floor and hit her head on the edge of the subway.”
In the interview, her mother said she had seen video footage from the subway car. “I don’t think what people are saying happened,” she said, claiming there was nothing controversial in the video.
Armita’s parents’ statements were published to allay suspicions, but for many this only increased their suspicions.
“The government’s behavior shows its concerted efforts to prevent the truth about Armita Geravand from coming to light,” Mohammadi said in a post on her Instagram page, written with a colleague just a day before she was awarded the peace prize .
Mohammadi described the interview with Armita’s parents as “ambiguous and opaque” and accused Iranian leaders of trying to “prevent the truth about Armita from coming to light.”
Activists called on the government to release more security videos.
“We will not allow you to destroy the truth; Post the full video on the subway,” Hossein Ronaghi, a prominent activist previously detained by Iranian authorities, posted on social media.
Geravand’s fate also caused concern among foreign officials. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock pointed out similarities with the Amini case. “Once again a young woman is fighting for her life in #Iran. Just because she showed her hair on the subway. It’s unbearable,” she tweeted, adding that her parents should be by her side instead of putting her in front of the cameras.
Abram Paley, the US envoy to the Iranian office, said he was “shocked and worried “about reports that Iran’s so-called moral police attacked 16-year-old Armita Geravand,” he added Reports of the arrest of a journalist investigating the case are also unacceptable.
In an apparent response to some of these statements, the Iranian foreign minister’s spokesman replied: Wet Canaanisuggested that American, British and German officials take care of their own striking health care workers “instead of making interventionist and biased remarks and expressing disingenuous concerns about Iranian women and girls.”
After last year’s protests, Iran initially appeared to have scaled back its morality policing, but patrols resumed this year as the country took steps to again tighten dress code enforcement.
Many women stopped covering their heads and some even burned headscarves at rallies after Amini’s death.