Iran arrests 2 actors for removing hijab as crackdown on protesters continues
Hengameh Ghaziani and Katayoun Riahi — two prominent actors in Iran — have been detained for ‘provocative’ social media posts as crackdown on anti-hijab protesters continues in the Islamic Republic.
Maybe this will be my last post, Hengameh Ghaziani wrote on her Instagram, adding that, “From this moment on, whatever happens to me, know that as always, I am with the Iranian people until my last breath.”
The 52-year-old movie star was detained for removing the obligatory headscarf in a busy street. The video, which appears to have been filmed in a shopping street, shows Ghaziani bareheaded, facing the camera without speaking and then turning around and binding her hair into a ponytail.
Later, Katayoun Riahi was also arrested for the same reason, according to state media.
The actor, 60, who has appeared in a string of award-winning movies, had in September given an interview to London-based Iran International TV, an outlet despised by the regime, without wearing a hijab.
She had expressed solidarity with the protests that have swept Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini, as well as opposition to the obligatory hijab.
The protest erupted in Iran in September following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman. Mahsa was reportedly killed three days after her arrest in Tehran by the morality police for allegedly breaching the Islamic dress code for women.
The protests, which were concentrated in Iran’s Kurdish-populated northwestern regions, spread to over 50 cities and towns nationwide, are the largest since a wave of demonstrations in 2019 over gasoline price rises.
Amini’s death unleashed anger over issues including freedoms in the Islamic Republic and an economy reeling from sanctions. Women have played a prominent role in the protests, waving and burning their veils, cutting their hair in public, knocking the turbans off the heads of clerics and asking them to pack their bags and leave Iran.
More than 300 people have been killed by security forces over two months of protests, according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR). The group says 15,000 people have been arrested, a figure the Iranian authorities deny.