HOUSTON, Texas – Looking at social media reports from Iran and the violent clashes between Iranian police and Iranian women is like looking at a montage of anger, protest, and outrage.
It is an outrage that has been brewing within Iranian women for more than 40 years now after four decades of being ruled by a government that tells them how to wear their hair, how to dress, and how to live.
It is anger that has recently super-charged many people after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested by the morality police in Iran and then beaten to death in jail a few days later for the outrageous crime, by Iran’s standards, of wearing her head covering too loosely.
Now, more women and men, hundreds of them, are dying every day all over Iran as they protest against what they call an incredibly oppressive government.
”They (the government police) just go out and shoot people who are asking for their freedom. And they are even killing little girls and students now as young as 5, 6 and 7 years old, “says Arezoo Daneshbvar of Houston.
Arezoo, is a Houston psychotherapist who was born and raised in Iran but fled her troubled country in her early 20s to escape the oppressive government that’s now in power.
But, her mother, loving sister, and countless friends and relatives are still there, living this nightmare crackdown by government police, in which innocent people are being beaten and killed in the street every day.
To make matters worse, the government of Iran has effectively shut down the internet and shut down much of the news coming out of the country.
Although there are no hard numbers or official statistics, what is known is that dozens of protesters, mostly women and young women, have been beaten to death and killed by police for cutting their hair and marching in protest in a desperate plea for freedom of oppression.
In Houston, with her family in danger, Arezoo wants the United States and the entire world to wake up to what is happening in Iran.
”Right now, women are taking off their scarves and saying ‘no, I don’t want you to tell me what to wear anymore. I don’t want you to tell me what to do or where to go anymore. We want freedom and we are going to get it no matter what,’” Arezoo said.
Arezoo is now busy working with other Iranians in Houston to organize a protest Saturday, Oct. 29 in front of the Al Hadi School on Voss near Westheimer from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Arezoo said she hopes thousands of people will join her in the protest against the atrocities taking place in her homeland.