Iran
The incident has thrown the country into renewed turmoil a year after mass protests over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini
The hospitalization of a 16-year-old girl in Tehran has led to accusations from a human rights group and activists that she was beaten into a coma by Iran’s feared “moral police,” sending the country back into turmoil a year after mass protests erupted over the treatment of women .
Footage of the incident showed a girl being carried off a train by other girls at a subway station and laid on the platform, where she appeared to remain unconscious.
According to Hengaw, an exiled human rights organization, Armita Garawand suffered a “severe physical attack” by the “morality police” for failing to comply with national regulations on hijab.
State media, which published the edited footage, claimed the girl instead fainted after her blood pressure dropped, causing her to crash into the side of the train carriage.
The footage released does not show what happened on the train, only the girl continuing to run and then being carried away, apparently by friends. The poor quality video does not clearly show what type of headgear, if any, she was wearing.
The government’s official news agency, Fars, published an interview with the girl’s parents in which they said she was not attacked. The father’s statement is recorded: “We have checked all the videos and it has been proven to us that this incident was an accident.” We ask people to pray for the recovery of our child.”
Iranian authorities have published forced interviews with family members in the past, leading to accusations online that Armita’s parents were forced to talk.
A journalist from the reformist Shargh newspaper who tried to cover the story by going to the hospital was briefly detained. Access to the hospital has since been blocked by police.
The incident and the contradictory explanations bear close parallels to the events that preceded the death of a Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for failing to comply with hijab rules.
Mahsa Amini and a year of brutality and courage in Iran – in illustrations
Authorities insisted Amini had a neurological disorder that caused her to collapse at a police station. Her family never accepted the explanation for her subsequent death in a coma and said they were denied the right to choose the doctor to conduct an autopsy.
Since then, Iranian authorities have tried to strengthen the hijab requirement for women by passing new laws, but in parts of some cities the requirement is being ignored. Security officers frequently patrol train stations in Tehran.
Since Amini’s death, the level of government censorship has increased and two of the journalists who reported on Amini’s fate remain in prison, accused of collaborating with outside powers. Some reformist newspapers were closed.
There have been claims on social media that history is repeating itself and that Iranian officials are involved in a fabricated story, similar to the alleged cover-up following Amini’s death. At the very least, the episode underscores the distrust of government officials and state-affiliated media.
Amini’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, is being tried in court on charges of propaganda against the regime, including for challenging the official forensic reports on Amini’s death and for speaking to local and foreign media about Iran.
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