DUBAI – An Iranian teenage girl injured weeks in the past in a mysterious incident on Tehran’s Metro while not wearing a headscarf has died, state media reported Saturday.
The demise of Armita Geravand comes after her being in a coma for weeks in Tehran and after the one-year anniversary of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini which sparked national protests on the time.
Geravand’s Oct. 1 damage and now her demise threaten to reignite that well-liked anger, in particular as ladies in Tehran and in different places nonetheless defy Iran’s necessary headscarf, or hijab, legislation as a signal in their discontent with Iran’s theocracy.
Iran’s state-run IRNA news company reported Geravand’s demise, with out noting the broader unrest surrounding the headscarf legislation.
What came about within the few seconds after Armita Geravand entered the teach on Oct. 1 stays in query. While a pal informed Iranian state tv that she hit her head on the station’s platform, the soundless photos aired by means of the broadcaster from out of doors of the auto is blocked by means of a bystander. Just seconds later, her limp frame is carried off.
Geravand’s folks seemed in state media photos pronouncing a blood drive factor, a fall or most likely each contributed to their daughter’s damage.
The Associated Press has not been ready to verify the precise instances of what brought about Geravand’s accidents.
Activists out of the country have alleged Geravand can have been driven or attacked for not wearing the hijab. They additionally demanded an impartial investigation by means of the United Nations’ fact-finding undertaking on Iran, mentioning the theocracy’s use of drive on sufferers’ households and state TV’s history of airing hundreds of coerced confessions.
Geravand suffered her damage on the Meydan-E Shohada, or Martyrs’ Square, Metro station in southern Tehran. Rumors about how she suffered the damage briefly circulated, one thing not discussed by means of the IRNA file on her demise.
“Unfortunately, the brain damage to the victim caused her to spend some time in a coma and she died a few minutes ago,” the IRNA file learn. “According to the official theory of Armita Geravand’s doctors, after a sudden drop in blood pressure, she suffered a fall, a brain injury, followed by continuous convulsions, decreased cerebral oxygenation and a cerebral edema.”
Geravand’s damage additionally got here as Iran has put its morality police — whom activists implicate in Amini’s demise — again on the road, and as lawmakers push to enforce even stricter penalties for those flouting the required head covering. Internationally, Geravand’s damage sparked renewed complaint of Iran’s remedy of girls and of the necessary hijab legislation.
Amini died in a clinic on Sept. 16, 2022, after she was once detained by means of Iranian morality police on allegations of improperly wearing the hijab. Suspicions that she was once crushed all over her arrest ended in mass protests that represented the most important problem to Iran’s theocratic executive for the reason that revolution.
Since the ones large-scale protests subsided, many ladies in Tehran might be noticed with out the hijab in defiance of the legislation.
Meanwhile, imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi received the Nobel Peace Prize previous this month in reputation of her tireless campaigning for girls’s rights and democracy, and towards the demise penalty. The Iranian executive criticized her awarding of the prize as a political stunt, with out acknowledging its personal decadeslong marketing campaign concentrated on Mohammadi for her paintings.
Iran stays squeezed by means of sanctions and faces ever-rising tensions with the West over its rapidly advancing nuclear program and its assist to regional militant teams, together with a renewed center of attention on its relationship with Hamas following that group’s unprecedented attack on and war with Israel.
For observant Muslim ladies, the pinnacle protecting is a signal of piety sooner than God and modesty in entrance of guys out of doors their households. In Iran, the hijab — and the all-encompassing black chador worn by means of some — has long been a political symbol as well, in particular after changing into necessary within the years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran and neighboring Taliban-ruled Afghanistan are the one international locations the place the hijab stays necessary for girls.