Iran State Media Claims Teenager 'Brain Dead' After Alleged Morality Police Assault

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Facts

  • Armita Geravand, the teenage girl who fell into a coma earlier this month after allegedly being assaulted by the 'morality' police at a Tehran metro station for not wearing a hijab, is 'brain dead' despite medical efforts, according to Iran's Tasnim news agency.1
  • This comes nearly a fortnight after Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported that six doctors at Fajr Air Force Base Hospital treating the 16-year-old — whose level of consciousness had fallen to 3 on the Glasgow Coma Scale — told her family that she had no hope of recovery.2
  • According to Iran International, authorities have pressured the Geravand family to discreetly relocate her body from Tehran to Jafar Abad, Kermanshah in the event of her death, in a bid to avoid public demonstrations similar to those following the death of Mahsa Amini in mid-September last year.3
  • The 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman was allegedly killed in police custody after being arrested for failing to comply with the Islamic Republic's clothing laws. Iran, however, has claimed she died of a heart problem.4
  • Amini's death triggered an unprecedented wave of nationwide anti-government demonstrations that spilled into this year and, according to the group Iran Human Rights, killed at least 537 protestors and saw over 19.4K arrested.5
  • Meanwhile, Iran's judiciary on Sunday disclosed that two female journalists — Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi — have received preliminary prison sentences for national security charges over cases linked with the protests. In May, they were named as recipients of the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize along with Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi.6

Sources: 1CNN, 2Iranwire, 3Iran international, 4Middle east eye, 5Commonslibrary.parliament.uk and 6Al Jazeera.

Narratives

  • Anti-Iran narrative, as provided by Iran international. The Islamic Republic's morality police have yet again victimized a young girl so as to enforce a mandatory dress code. While journalists reporting on their inhumane behavior will be imprisoned, the victim's family will be forced to air fabricated views. The Iranian authorities are using the very same playbook they applied to malign Amini.
  • Pro-Iran narrative, as provided by Presstv. The West has again resorted to distorting the facts of a sad incident in a smear campaign against the Islamic Republic. Such malicious allegations can only prove that Western countries don't care about human rights, as they have no qualms using women as a political tool against independent nations.

Predictions