Her face has lit up a billboard in Times Square, and been painted on murals in Paris and Berlin. It has been splashed on the Barcelona soccer team’s private jet and commemorated on T-shirts with the red, white and green colors of Iran’s flag. Vienna and Los Angeles have even named streets after her.
At rallies across Iran and the world last year, tens of thousand of men and women waved placards with her face shouting, “Say her name: Mahsa Amini. Mahsa Amini.”
Saturday will mark one year since the 22-year-old woman from Saghez, a small city in a Kurdish province in northwest Iran, died in the custody of the country’s morality police on allegations of violating the hijab law, which mandates women and girls cover their hair and bodies.
Her death in Tehran ignited monthslong protests nationwide, led by women and girls who tossed off their head scarves in defiance and demanded the end to the Islamic Republic’s rule. The uprising bearing her name, the “Mahsa movement,” morphed into the most serious challenge to the legitimacy of Iran’s ruling clerics since they took power in 1979. » | Farnaz Fassihi | Saturday, September 16, 2023
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