Four years have passed since Mahsa Jina Amini died in a Tehran hospital after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for an alleged improper hijab. She was just 22.
The anniversary of her death was observed on Wednesday with a general strike across several Iranian provinces. Footage from Kurdish areas displayed closed shops in her hometown of Saqqez, as well as in Sanandaj, Kamyaran and neighboring towns. Security and riot police were positioned, and access to Aichi Cemetery—where she is buried—was reportedly obstructed.
Four Kurdish political prisoners announced a hunger strike in remembrance, and rights organizations reported a surge in arrests in the preceding days.
The continued heavy security measures four years after the death of a young Kurdish woman underscore how powerful her name still resonates across Iran.
Mahsa Amini’s death on September 16, 2022, ignited nationwide protests and introduced the rallying cry “Woman, Life, Freedom.” Women publicly removed and burned their hijabs, and demonstrators took to the streets from Tehran to the western Kurdish regions.
Demonstrations in Iran brutally crushed
The protests were ultimately suppressed. Hundreds were killed, thousands arrested, and several demonstrators later executed. While the regime survived the uprising, Iranian society was not left unchanged.
The most visible shift is among women. Today, women can often be seen in Tehran and other major cities strolling through malls, sitting in cafés, and using public transport without the compulsory hijab.
Authorities persist in enforcing mandatory veiling via arrests, prosecutions, surveillance cameras, warning notices, vehicle confiscations, and pressure on businesses. The law stays in place, yet women openly flouting it are now far more common than before Amini’s death.
Yet there is a risk in reducing the movement she inspired to merely the issue of the hijab.
“In my view, one reason the name of Jina Amini and the Woman, Life, Freedom revolution has endured is that this revolution should not be reduced to the issue of the hijab,” Yasser Fattahi told The Jerusalem Post.
Fattahi’s family experienced the violence of those early protests firsthand. His father was killed while attempting to rescue a young woman who had been shot after Amini’s funeral.
“Women’s problems are not limited to the hijab,” Fattahi said. “Freedom does not simply mean the freedom to choose whether to wear a hijab. That is the most fundamental women’s right.”
These remarks are especially poignant when viewing Iran four years later. Women still confront pervasive discrimination, political prisoners remain incarcerated, and executions continue at an alarming rate.
Renewed nationwide protests leave 40,000 reportedly dead
Earlier this year, a fresh wave of nationwide protests was met with lethal force and mass arrests, resulting in an estimated death toll of at least 40,000. Economic hardship, political repression, and calls for greater personal freedom remain constant features of life in Iran.
A new generation of Iranians has come of age amid the aftermath of Amini’s death. A girl who was 14 in September 2022 is now 18, having spent her teenage years observing women defy mandatory veiling, students clashing with authorities, demonstrators facing execution, and repeated waves of unrest convulsing the nation.
The massive protests of autumn 2022 have vanished from Iran’s streets, and the Islamic Republic has consistently shown both the capability and intent to quell organized dissent. Yet four years later, the underlying grievances that first propelled Iranians into the streets remain evident.
Wednesday provided another modest sign of this. In Saqqez and other towns, shopkeepers were ready to shut their businesses in tribute to a woman whose death the regime would rather see buried in history.
Mahsa Amini never witnessed the movement that grew from the outrage over her death, nor the millions worldwide who came to know her name. By September 2026, Iran remains repressive, and many of the freedoms demanded by the 2022 protesters are still unfulfilled.
The closed shops in her hometown on Wednesday illustrated that, four years after her death, Mahsa Amini still stands as a potent symbol of the freedoms many Iranians continue to demand.
