A 16-year-old Iranian girl is fighting for her life after alleged assault by police officers who dragged her out of Tehran Metro for violating the hijab law, rights groups said. The incident came a year after the death of Mahsa Amini that sparked global outrage.
The victim, Armita Garawand, hails from the city of Kermanshah in Kurdish-populated western Iran and is currently a resident of Tehran. She is now coma and is being treated at the hospital under heavy security.
The Kurdish-focused rights group Hengaw said the teenager, had been badly injured in a confrontation on the Tehran metro with female police officers.
However, Iranian authorities have refused these allegations and said the girl “fainted” due to low blood pressure and that there was no involvement of the security forces.
A purported video of the incident shows that the teen, with friends and apparently unveiled, being pushed into the metro by female police agents and then an immobile body pulled out.
Hengaw said that Garawand was left with severe injuries after being apprehended and physically attacked by agents of the so-called morality police at the Shohada metro station in Tehran on Sunday. It said she was being treated under tight security at Tehran’s Fajr hospital and “there are currently no visits allowed for the victim, not even from her family”.
Iran Authorities on High Alert
In the wake of the incident, Iranian authorities were on high alert for any upsurge of social tension. Last year, the death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress rules for women, sparked several months of protests that rattled Iran’s clerical leadership and only dwindled in the face of a crackdown that according to activists has seen thousands arrested and hundreds killed.
Masood Dorosti, managing director of the Tehran subway system, denied there was “any verbal or physical conflict” between the student and “passengers or metro executives”. “Some rumours about a confrontation with metro agents… are not true and CCTV footage refutes this claim,” Dorosti told state news agency IRNA.
The IranWire news site, based outside Iran, cited a source as saying she had sustained a “head injury” after being pushed by the officers.
A year after Amini’s death, Iranian authorities have launched a renewed push to crack down on women defying the Islamic republic’s strict dress rules for women, including the mandatory hijab.
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The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said women and girls “face increased violence, arbitrary arrests and heightened discrimination after the Islamic Republic re-activated its forced-veiling police patrols”.
(With AFP inputs)
first published: October 04, 2023, 23:20 IST
