Mahsa Amini has become a mighty symbol for Iranian woman

Women are removing their state-mandated headscarves, burning them and cutting off their hair in the streets of Iran, after the death of 22 year old Amini in custody.

NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 21: People participate in a protest against Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi outside of the United Nations on September 21, 2022 in New York City. Protests have broke out over the death of 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody for allegedly violating the country's hijab rules. Amini's death has sparked protests across Iran and other countries. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Women are removing their state-mandated headscarves, burning them and cutting off their hair in the streets of Iran, after the death of 22 year old Amini in custody.

Iran’s president was trailed by protesters through the streets of New York yesterday amid a global outcry over a young woman who died in police custody after being arrested over a loose headscarf.

As President Raisi arrived to address the United Nations general assembly, several thousand Iranian-Americans gathered outside and cheered a speaker who compared the demonstrations that have erupted in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini to the popular protests that triggered the Arab Spring.

Protests began on Saturday at Amini’s funeral in her home town near the Iraqi border and quickly spread across the country to the central city of Isfahan and to Tehran, where female protesters were seen cutting their hair and burning their headscarves in the street.

Security forces have been accused of firing directly at protesters as part of a clampdown blamed for the deaths of at least six people. Scores of people have been injured, including a ten-year-old girl who was shot in the head.

Amini was arrested last Tuesday for allegedly violating strict Islamic dress codes. Credible reports suggest that she was beaten and suffered injuries to her head during her arrest, leading her to fall into a coma from which she did not recover.

At the UN yesterday, James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, called on Iran to take “another path”, referring to its aspiration to nuclear weapons and its internal repression.

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President Biden said in his speech to the UN that Americans “stand with the brave citizens and the brave women of Iran who right now are demonstrating to secure their basic rights”.

Raisi, who has been sanctioned by the US over his alleged involvement in a 1988 massacre of political prisoners, did not mention Amini’s death, instead striking a defiant tone and accusing western nations of a “double standard” on human rights. He pointed to the discovery, last year, of the bodies of more than a thousand indigenous children who had been forced to attend boarding schools in western Canada. He also called for an international tribunal to investigate the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed by a US drone strike.

He said his government was prepared to engage in negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear accord, which curbed Iran’s nuclear activities, in return for the lifting of sanctions, but that the US had a history of “trampling” on agreements it had signed.

The demonstrators had greeted his arrival with images of 2,000 political prisoners killed in 1988. Raisi is said to have been one of four judges who oversaw the executions.

“Every one of these pictures belongs to a family inside of Iran,” said Hamid Azimi, 62, a systems engineer from San Francisco.

Addressing the crowd, Joe Lieberman, a former US senator, said the protests over the death of Amini recalled “the street vendor in Tunisia who set himself on fire to protest the government, and that started the Arab Spring. This Iranian regime is under stress.”