Who was Mahsa Amini?
Mahsa Amini — known in Kurdish as Jina (Jîna) — was born on 22 September 1999 in Saqqez, a Kurdish-majority city in Iran's Kordestan province. At the time of her death she was 22, had just been admitted to university in Urmia, and was visiting Tehran with her family.
Her Kurdish given name, Jina (meaning "life"), was banned for official documents by the Islamic Republic, which is why her identity card carried the Persian name "Mahsa". Many Kurds and women's-rights activists deliberately use both names — Jina Mahsa Amini — to mark that erasure.
What happened on 13 September 2022?
On the afternoon of 13 September 2022, Amini and her brother Kiarash were leaving Haqqani Metro Station in Tehran when she was stopped by the Guidance Patrol (Gasht-e Ershad) for an alleged "improper" hijab. Witnesses, including her brother, reported that she was beaten as she was forced into a van and taken to the Vozara detention centre for a "re-education" briefing.
What happened in custody?
Within two hours of her arrest, Amini collapsed at the Vozara facility. She was transferred to Kasra Hospital in a coma with signs of severe head trauma. Leaked CT scans published by Iran International and verified by independent radiologists showed skull fractures consistent with blunt-force injury. She never regained consciousness and was declared dead on 16 September 2022.
Iranian authorities claimed she died of a "sudden heart attack" caused by a pre-existing condition. Her family and doctors familiar with her medical history publicly rejected this account. The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran later concluded that her death was the result of "physical violence" inflicted by state agents.
What happened at her funeral?
Amini was buried in Saqqez on 17 September 2022. At her graveside, women removed and waved their headscarves, chanting "Jin, Jiyan, Azadî" (Kurdish: Woman, Life, Freedom). Security forces opened fire on mourners. Within 48 hours, protests had spread from Kurdistan to Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz, Isfahan, Zahedan, and dozens of other cities.
What did her death trigger?
The protests that followed became the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising — the first revolt in the Islamic Republic's history led by women and joined by every social class, ethnicity and region. Between September 2022 and early 2023, Iran Human Rights and HRANA documented at least 551 protesters killed, including 71 children, and more than 22,000 detained. Nine protesters were judicially executed.
Three years on, the uprising's grievances — compulsory hijab, the morality police, judicial impunity, an unaccountable Supreme Leader — directly fed into the 2025–2026 Crimson Winter uprising.
What is Mahsa Amini's legacy?
Amini's name has been adopted by streets, squares and prizes worldwide. In 2023 the European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought — accepted, in absentia, by her family in Strasbourg after the Islamic Republic banned them from travelling. The Sakharov was the first time the prize had been awarded to a person who was already dead.
In Iran, her family has been continuously harassed, briefly detained, banned from holding memorials and prevented from leaving the country. Her cousin Erfan Mortezai was sentenced to death in absentia in 2023.