Mahsa Amini protests

Overview

The Mahsa Amini protests were a nationwide uprising in Iran that began after Jina Mahsa Amini died in police custody on September 16, 2022. Morality police had arrested her over a breach of the country’s mandatory veiling law for women. Her death brought years of anger over discriminatory policies, coercive enforcement and official impunity into the streets. Women and girls led demonstrations under the chant “Woman, Life, Freedom.” The movement began in Iran’s Kurdistan province, where Amini was from, and spread across the country.

More than 1,600 protests took place. Demonstrators challenged compulsory hijab rules and the authority of the Islamic Republic itself. They gathered in major cities and smaller communities, including repeated demonstrations in Qom. Their demands extended beyond any single law: protesters sought personal freedom, political rights and an end to decades of discrimination against women. The uprising became Iran’s most severe, extensive and prolonged protest wave since the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

Security forces met the movement with extreme violence. Authorities killed more than 500 protesters, including more than 60 children, and arrested nearly 20,000 people. Kurdish and Baluch areas suffered especially severe repression and accounted for more than half of those killed. By early 2023, the regime had suppressed the nationwide wave. It retained control through a cohesive security apparatus, while many women continued to defy compulsory dress rules and officials remained fearful of another uprising.

Background

The Islamic Republic established compulsory veiling as a feature of its rule after the 1979 revolution. Enforcement placed women under the authority of morality police and made dress a recurring point of confrontation between citizens and the state. The dispute formed part of a wider struggle over women’s legal status, political freedom and the power of unelected institutions. Protest against compulsory veiling had appeared before 2022, including public acts of defiance by women who removed their head coverings. Earlier demonstrations over elections, economic hardship and government conduct had also exposed deep dissatisfaction with the regime.

The grievances that surfaced in September 2022 were therefore older than Amini’s arrest. Discriminatory rules affected women’s opportunities and private lives, while violent responses to previous protest waves had gone without effective accountability. Under Ebrahim Raisi, authorities intensified enforcement of mandatory veiling. In August 2022, Raisi signed a decree increasing penalties for violations. Amini’s death weeks later turned the dress code into a symbol of the state’s broader treatment of women and its use of force against dissent.

Iran’s Kurdish women had a distinct history of organizing around rights and public life. Activists in Iranian Kurdistan established a “Women and Life” committee in 2003. The slogan later adopted across the country, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” came from the Kurdish resistance. This history gave the movement’s opening in Kurdistan particular force. Amini, also known as Zhina, was a Kurdish woman whose death connected opposition to compulsory veiling with demands for dignity and freedom among communities long subjected to heavy state repression.

The movement drew people with differing political aims. Monarchists, nationalists, leftists, Kurdish organizations and other anti-regime currents participated or expressed support, without forming a single leadership. Their shared opposition to the regime did not erase disagreements about Iran’s future. That breadth helped demonstrations spread well beyond Kurdistan, but it also made lasting coordination difficult. Local centers of protest often acted independently, and the movement never established a central command capable of joining its activities into a sustained nationwide campaign.

Course of the war

Morality police arrested Amini during a visit to Tehran in September 2022. She fell into a coma while in custody and died on September 16. News of her death prompted demonstrations in Iran’s Kurdistan province that quickly spread to other parts of the country. Protesters treated the arrest as an expression of compulsory control over women and the death as a demand for accountability. The response soon became an uprising against the ruling order rather than a campaign limited to changing police practice.

Women and girls stood at the front of marches and other acts of public defiance. Some removed or burned their head coverings. Students and other young people joined demonstrations, while crowds voiced opposition to senior officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Protesters also criticized Mojtaba Khamenei. Demonstrations in Qom showed that unrest reached a city central to the regime’s clerical establishment. Across Iran, the chant “Woman, Life, Freedom” joined local grievances to a recognizable national movement.

Iranian Kurdish opposition groups helped organize strikes alongside street demonstrations. The Cooperation Center of Iranian Kurdistan’s Political Parties, a coalition involving Komala and the PDKI, called for strikes and demonstrations early in the protest wave. Opposition parties mobilized shopkeepers to close their stores in general strikes. Those closures demonstrated their continuing support among people in Iranian Kurdistan and gave residents a means of participating beyond public marches. Kurdish participation remained prominent even as protests reached communities with different languages, histories and political priorities.

Security forces concentrated severe repression in Kurdish and Baluch areas. They used heavy violence in Mahabad, while the regime attacked Iranian Kurdish opposition parties with assassinations, drones and missiles during the protests. These actions accompanied the wider crackdown inside Iran. More than half of protesters killed nationwide came from Kurdish and Baluch areas. The distribution of deaths reflected the exceptional danger faced by protesters there, even though demonstrations and arrests occurred throughout the country.

The crackdown extended beyond confrontations in streets. Authorities arrested nearly 20,000 protesters and singled out hundreds of children for arrest and punishment. Many detainees faced torture and other ill-treatment. Islamic revolutionary courts tried detained protesters in secret proceedings that violated basic due process standards. The use of detention and prosecution sought to punish participation, discourage further gatherings and demonstrate that the regime could impose consequences long after individual demonstrations ended.

Women’s participation did not mean the movement was confined to one issue or one constituency. Compulsory veiling supplied a common symbol, but demonstrators also objected to political repression, official violence and restrictions on civil freedom. Participants included people who sought reform as well as people who wanted to remove the ruling system. That diversity gave the uprising reach across Iran. It also left local groups without settled agreement on leadership, a common strategy or the steps needed to turn repeated protests into a transfer of power.

As the months passed, the regime combined violent suppression with its capacity to retain institutional cohesion. Its leaders disagreed on some policies, yet security bodies maintained the resolve to confront threats to their rule. Demonstrations continued long enough to mark the most prolonged protest wave since 1979, but they did not mobilize enough people in a coordinated campaign to overturn the regime. By early 2023, authorities had suppressed the nationwide wave, although its demands and symbols remained visible.

Outcome

The immediate political outcome was survival of the Islamic Republic. More than 500 protesters had been killed and nearly 20,000 arrested, but the movement did not remove the regime or establish a replacement authority. The absence of central leadership and coordination among local protest centers limited its ability to sustain a decisive challenge. Fear of disorder also restrained some potential supporters of revolutionary change. Meanwhile, the regime’s security apparatus remained cohesive despite disagreements within the ruling establishment.

Suppression did not settle the conflict that had produced the uprising. Women in major cities increasingly appeared in public without complying with compulsory hijab rules. Their choices kept the movement’s central demand in daily view after large demonstrations ended. Authorities continued to assert the dress code, and morality police returned to street enforcement in 2023, but officials also had to weigh the risk that harsher measures would ignite another protest wave. The gap between the law and patterns of public dress became a lasting consequence of the uprising.

The protest wave also changed the international response to the regime’s treatment of women and demonstrators. In November 2022, the UN Human Rights Council condemned the crackdown and created an Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Iran to investigate violations committed since the protests began. In December, Iran was removed from the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Those actions placed the deaths, arrests and treatment of detainees before international bodies, even as Iranian authorities retained control at home.

In March 2023, UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman concluded that senior officials had ordered the violent crackdown and that its conduct may have amounted to crimes against humanity. His assessment addressed the scale and organization of state violence, including killings, arbitrary arrests and treatment in detention. International scrutiny did not end reprisals within Iran. Victims of the crackdown and their families continued to face threats and harassment as authorities sought to prevent renewed organizing and demands for accountability.

Aftermath and legacy

The first anniversary of Amini’s death in September 2023 became another test of the regime’s fear of mass protest. Authorities threatened and arrested people they suspected of planning commemorations or demonstrations. About 22 human rights defenders were arrested in August 2023 ahead of the anniversary. The pressure reached people connected directly to Amini’s case: authorities prosecuted Saleh Nikbakht, the lawyer for her family, on a charge of propaganda against the regime. Reprisals against families and advocates showed that the state continued to treat the uprising’s memory as a political threat.

Reports of more than 90 chemical poisoning incidents at educational institutions across 28 provinces after November 2022, particularly at girls’ schools, deepened concern for young women who had played a visible role in the protests. The incidents occurred amid continued threats against women’s rights activists and students. Authorities did not provide an effective public resolution of the danger. For families already affected by deaths, arrests and intimidation, the reports added to the insecurity that followed the end of mass demonstrations.

The uprising’s cultural symbols also endured. “Woman, Life, Freedom” remained a concise expression of resistance to coercion and discriminatory rule. “Baraye,” an anthem associated with the movement, entered wider public memory; a “Baraye Iran” backdrop behind the relief at Persepolis echoed its title. Persepolis reached a visitor peak during Nowruz 2023 amid the uprising’s aftermath. Such references carried protest language into settings beyond demonstrations and kept the movement recognizable after authorities dispersed crowds.

Later disputes over hijab enforcement exposed the regime’s unresolved dilemma. Hardliners passed a new law imposing tougher penalties for breaches of the dress code. President Masoud Pezeshkian and parliamentary speaker Muhammad Baqer Qalibaf refrained from enacting it, and Iran’s Supreme National Security Council paused its enforcement in December 2024. Pezeshkian had supported the Woman, Life, Freedom movement during the 2022 protests while criticizing calls to remove Khamenei from power. His later objection to the new law reflected concern that strict enforcement would provoke renewed unrest, rather than an end to the regime’s authority over women’s dress.

Hardline factions pressed for the law’s implementation, while women’s public defiance showed the limits of coercion. In a 2025 Eid al-Fitr sermon, Khamenei threatened a strong response to renewed internal unrest. The regime thus retained the institutions and force needed to suppress opposition, yet remained alert to the possibility of another uprising. Changes in public dress did not amount to a change of government; they showed that a demand at the heart of the 2022 protests survived the defeat of the nationwide wave.

The Mahsa Amini protests remain a turning point in Iran’s struggle over women’s rights and political rule. A death following a mandatory veiling arrest brought together local resistance, Kurdish organizing and nationwide anger at official violence. The movement spread through more than 1,600 protests and drew international scrutiny, but its decentralized structure and the regime’s cohesive security apparatus prevented it from overturning the ruling system. Its legacy lies in the continued refusal of many women to accept compulsory veiling, the demands for accountability from victims’ families and the regime’s continuing fear that those demands could again fill Iran’s streets.