Azad Hajiaghaei
Two years ago, when Kurds in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhilat) raised the slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (Woman, Life, Freedom) at Jina Amini’s funeral in Saqqez’s Aichi cemetery, few could have foreseen that this rallying cry—and the enduring struggle of Kurds, particularly Kurdish women, in Eastern Kurdistan and Iran—would become a powerful foundation for change across Iran. Yet, the lack of attention from Iranian democrats and even women activists to the Kurdish pursuit of democracy has been equally surprising.
The consequences of this widespread movement continue to reverberate throughout Iran and Iranian Kurdistan. While the early months of the uprising forged a fragile consensus among pro-democracy forces striving for democracy in Iran, subsequent events revealed the persistence of the hegemonic mentality rooted in centralism. This mentality, inherent to the state’s centralist and religious ideologies, continues to distort and co-opt the slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi”, thus obstructing any substantive transformation.
Allow me to illustrate this with a few key episodes:
Episode One
In the winter of 2003, Dr. Homa Darabi, one of Iran’s leading psychiatrists and a university professor, staged a powerful protest in Tajrish Square, Tehran. She removed her headscarf, moved through the crowd, and chanted, “Long live Iran, long live freedom, death to the dictator.” She then poured gasoline over her legs, lit a match, and stood motionless, enduring the pain as she was engulfed in flames. For minutes, she remained there, leaning slightly forward, with tears streaming down her face until she succumbed to the flames in front of masses indoctrinated by Islamic Ideology. Darabi, disillusioned by the revolution that brought the mullahs to power, preferred death over the forced imposition of the veil.
Episode Two
On 17 March 2017, the “White Wednesdays” campaign emerged on social media, launched by Masih Alinejad, a former reformist and parliamentary reporter in Iran, to protest against the mandatory hijab. Over 200 videos of women without hijabs, filmed across Tehran and other major Iranian cities, quickly went viral. One particular video captured international attention, sparking a mass campaign within Iran’s virtual public sphere to resist the Islamic regime’s oppressive measures against women.
On December 27, 2017, a woman named Vida Movahed staged a symbolic protest on Enghelab Street in central Tehran, near a well-known French bakery. Clad in a plain dark outfit, she draped a white scarf over a wooden stick, stood on a platform, and, with a serene and dignified demeanor, remained there silently for several minutes before disappearing into the crowd. The masses, numbed by religious ideology and everyday routine life, largely ignored her protest, and no clear images of her face were recorded. She was soon arrested and became the face of the “Girls of Revolution Street” movement. Tehran’s prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, sentenced Vida Movahed to two years in prison, accusing her of “spreading corruption”.
Episode Three
On the evening of 16 September 2022, news broke of the potential death of a Kurdish woman, Jina Amini, in a Tehran hospital. As the entrance to Kasra Hospital filled with a tense security presence and sporadic protests, Amini’s funeral the next day at Saqez’s Aichi cemetery became one of the most charged events, reverberating with the chants of “Resistance is Life“, “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” and “Death to the dictator”. The masses stood firm, preventing a cleric from reciting a eulogy and pray. Demonstrations erupted in Saqqez, sparking clashes with regime forces. The movement swiftly spread to Tehran University, where students chanted “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi”.
Episode Four
On 2 November 2024, around the same time that Jina Modares Gorci, a Kurdish women activist from Sanandaj (Sine) was escorted to prison in Sanandaj to serve her sentence alongside numerous Kurdish civil activists, a student at the Islamic Azad University named Ahoo Dariyaie, in defiance of the university security’s excessive restrictions, removed her clothing, expressing her frustration.
Footage circulating in the media depicted her being detained by security forces amidst the indifference of students and passersby. Despite the significance of Modares’s imprisonment and the subsequent 20-day hunger strike by Warisheh Moradi to protest Iran’s use of the death penalty, these events received no mainstream media coverage; instead, they were met with deliberate silence.
Gender, and state-centered dynamics
The “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” uprising stands as one of the most radical challenges the Islamic Republic of Iran has confronted in its tenure. This uprising has not only contested the state’s authority but has also posed significant challenges to the state-centred mentality and the Persian-Shiite religious identity; it has highlighted the “Kurdish movement” and the “Kurdish issue” as a “Big Other” in the dominant political discourse crafted by centralist factions. Since this uprising, the spirit of freedom encapsulated by “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” has surged in influence, and Iran’s virtual public sphere bears testimony to its resonance.
Following the September 2022 uprising, this slogan initially gained traction even among centralists. Yet within two weeks, extensive efforts surfaced to distort it, rephrasing it as “Man, Homeland, Prosperity” (Mard, Meyhan Abadani). When this failed, factions within the Persian opposition, from the leftist to the right, grew aware of the challenges this slogan could pose to centralised state views in a post-Islamic Republic Iran.
Some, particularly royalists, sought to reframe its origins, linking it to Iran’s White Revolution of 1963. In late 2022, at the peak of the uprising, debates over whether to refer to her as “Jina” or “Mahsa” dominated verbal conflicts in the virtual public sphere, which continue to this day.
For instance, Masih Alinejad, who has led one of Iran’s most impactful campaigns against the mandatory hijab, insisted on using “Mahsa” when addressing the tragic killing of Jina Amini. However, following the publication of the image of Ahoo Dariyaie, she wrote: Her official name is Mahla, but her friends and close ones call her Ahoo, at her request.
Undoubtedly, women in Iran continue to endure systemic discrimination under a deeply religious and patriarchal framework. As Niki Kadi observes, the hijab remains a crucial tool of the Islamic Republic’s social control, with women from Kurdish and other ethnic groups facing similar restrictions.
However, civil political activists—and even some centrist women—often reinforce patriarchal norms in politics by adhering to conservative and patriarchal approaches. While intersectional perspectives are acknowledged in feminist studies, these activists frequently sidestep feminist geopolitical theories and overlook the unique gendered and ethnic dimensions represented by the Kurds as the originators of the slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi”.
In recent years, as my research has concentrated on Kurdish women’s resistance in Iranian Kurdistan, I have conducted numerous interviews with Kurdish women activists.
These conversations, spanning both Iran and the diaspora, reveal that even during the reformist period (1997–2005), Kurdish women often faced marginalisation from centrist women activists who frequently accused them of separatism.
Ideological and perceptual divides between Kurdish women and Tehran-based centrists regularly undermined potential solidarity. One interviewee recalled an International Women’s Day event in Tehran where Kurdish women were allowed to participate only on the condition that they identify exclusively as “Iranian”, effectively erasing their Kurdish identity. Another interviewee recounted that when Kurdish women activists in Tehran sought to campaign against the death penalty in Iran, centrist women activists deemed this demand overly radical, instead pressing for more restrained objectives that aligned with their own vision for the women’s movement.
Based on my lived experience in Iran and observations within the public sphere, there is a concerted effort to uphold deeply ingrained ideas, such as Iran’s territorial integrity, Iranian identity, national unity, and a cohesive Persian-Shiite identity. Many centrists, including numerous women activists, strive to perpetuate these principles by any means available.
The ongoing attempts to distort and appropriate the slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi”, the debates surrounding the name “Jina” as a metaphor, the indifference of centralist activists toward Warisheh Moradi’s hunger strike, and the imprisonment of Kurdish women activist Jina Modares are all pivotal examples. These instances underscore the persistent ideological biases of a state-centred, Persian-dominated, and Shia-oriented perspective in Iran.
Considering the political positions of both left- and right-wing opposition in Iran, following the rise of the Jin, Jiyan Azadi uprising, I maintain that the prevailing mentality among Iranians remains deeply centralised and state-oriented, marginalising other nations, including the Kurds, Balochs, Arabs, Azeris and on…
Moreover, the radical essence of the slogan Jin, Jiyan, Azadi often eludes their understanding, perhaps because its fundamental message directly challenges the core of their views. Consequently, there is a tendency to distort or co-opt the slogan to serve their own agendas!
Azad Hajiaghaei obtained his Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from Tehran University in 2018. Since 2021, he has been a postdoctoral researcher at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.
