The International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School stands in solidarity with the Iranian people as they mobilize on a groundbreaking scale to reclaim their human rights, dignity, and basic freedoms.
For the past ten days, courageous Iranian women have been leading protests across Iran’s provinces, openly challenging the Iranian regime’s police brutality and discriminatory compulsory hijab laws. The tragic death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini in police custody, after having been arrested for violating the Iranian regime’s dress code and allegedly tortured, has once again brought to the forefront Iranian women’s decades-long struggle to exercise their most fundamental freedoms, including choice of dress and bodily autonomy. As people in Iran continue to mobilize and struggle to end state repression and discrimination, the Iranian regime has responded with a violent and deadly crackdown, killing dozens of protestors with impunity. We believe it is our collective responsibility to speak up for justice and freedom and we find inspiration in the courage and persistence of the Iranian people. We call for an end to all forms of state violence, repression, and gender discrimination by the Iranian regime, and for the establishment of accountability mechanisms to end systemic impunity in Iran.
