This article is based on Fatemeh Shams’s presentation Poetics and Politics of Jina Amini Revolutionary Uprising in Iran at the EUME Berliner Seminar on 5 July 2023.
Inciting Incident: Jina Mahsa Amini
Last September, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman named Jina Mahsa Amini set off from her Kurdish hometown to visit relatives in Tehran. Driving down the Shahid Haghani Expressway with her brother, the Hijab Patrol stopped their car. Her hijab was a little loose. They could see some of her hair.
Jina was bundled into a police van with other female detainees bound for the notorious Moral Security Headquarters to undergo what is called ‘re-education’. The patrolmen threw insults at the women in the van. Jina resisted their taunts. They pushed her out her seat and slammed her head against the van several times. At the police station, as she was trying to convince the police that she was observing Hijab, she clutched her head suddenly and collapsed. Blood trickled from her ears.
By the time they got her to hospital, Jina was in a coma. Three days later, she died. A heart attack, said the police, forging medical documents. A brain tumor from childhood, said a neurosurgeon on state TV. Her family confirmed that Jina was a healthy young woman with no pre-existing health conditions. Leaked medical scans confirmed the cause: a skull fracture, cerebral hemorrhage, and brain edema from severe trauma to the head.