The photo does not have many elements. An older couple, she in her obligatory Iranian headscarf and trench coat, embrace. They are the parents of Mahsa Amini, who that September day was in a coma at the Kasrow hospital in Tehran. Amini, 22, had been transferred to the hospital two hours after being captured by the morality police in one of their raids against the so-called "Islamic misdress."
By the time Nilufar Hamedani posted that photo on social media, rumors were already spreading that Mahsa, or Jina, as her real name is in Kurdish, would not survive. The tragedy of this young woman had shocked, but above all outraged, an important sector of society in Iran, especially young women who had been victims of systematic abuse by these patrols for years, who, without specific criteria, detained dozens daily .
Jina's story was another of the many that Nilufar had decided to bring to light in her long career as a journalist dedicated to covering social issues, many of them with a gender focus. After learning that a young woman had suffered an attack at the Vozará police station, where women captured by the morality police are taken, she had gone to the hospital, not far from the headquarters of her newspaper, Sharq .
Despite the security that surrounds hospitals when they house people with a "high profile", Nilufar managed to get in, spoke with people related to the young woman and reconstructed her story, which would later be collected in the pages of this reformist newspaper, one of the most important in the country. That was how he was lucky enough to capture a couple who were consoling themselves and who would end up being Mahsa's parents. He uploaded the photo to social media and it went viral. Hours later it was learned that Mahsa had died.
Thus, the Mahsa tragedy ended up intersecting with the fate of Nilufar, which was immediately attacked by the regime's trolls. They accused her of passing information to opposition television stations that operate abroad and that by then had already picked up Mahsa's story and broadcast it.
By then, the Mahsa Amini tragedy became a tipping point for the Islamic Republic, which has not only faced the most significant protests in recent decades, but has also witnessed the determination of women, many of whom they are extremely young, who have raised their voices to demand their rights.
The women rose up against the regime, took off their headscarves in an act of defiance rarely seen before and, to the greater fear of the Islamic government, found a motto that united them, "Woman, life and freedom", which was not really new. , but taken from Kurdish women: “Jin, jan, zendegi”.
The immediate reaction of the nizam, or system, was to suppress the protests. Many young women who disappeared during the days were found dead days later; the argument of the authorities was that they had committed suicide. Others were shot, some in their eyes. There are a large number who have lost one of their eyes. And so until adding at least 520 deaths and more than 19,000 detainees.
Only five days passed when a group of men arrived at Nilufar's house, the one she shares with her husband, Mohamad Hosein Ajorloo, also a journalist, they searched every corner, took her documents and arrested her. Since then she has been in prison along with Elahe Mohamadi, who had taken over the coverage of the Mahsa Amini tragedy and had attended her funeral in Saqqez, Kurdistan.
Some 60 journalists have been imprisoned since then, but they have had it worst. For weeks, Nilufar was held in solitary confinement and interrogated. "Tolerating prison is like preparing for a marathon, you've never practiced enough," she told her husband on one of the visits that he later reconstructs on her Instagram account. Days ago, he told this same network that he had been fired from her job.
Many in Iran fear for these two journalists. Neither Nilufar, 30, nor Elahe, 35, benefited from the amnesty granted by the supreme leader in the framework of the anniversary of the Islamic revolution on February 11, in which thousands of prisoners, including artists, were released. journalists and activists jailed during the protests. The intelligence ministry and the revolutionary guards accused them of being CIA agents, which can lead to death. Later, the spokesman for the judicial system, Masud Setayeshi, assured that they were accused of “acting against national security and making propaganda against the State”.
