Tehran: A huge image of dozens of well-known Iranian women wearing headscarf disappeared from a billboard in Tehran on Friday, after it drew criticism amid protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody.
The original billboard appeared in Tehran’s Valiasr Square in the early hours of Thursday morning, bearing a image of well-known 50 women surrounding the slogan “Women of my country, Iran.”
Among them were mathematicians, political figures, and scientists such as the late mathematician Maryam Mirza Khani, revolutionary figure of the early 20th century Bibi Maryam Bakhtiari, and poet Parvin E’tesami.
As per the media reports, at least three of these women said they did not gave consent of their picture being misused, while the relatives of a few others objected.
However, the billboard was replaced on Friday morning, and was replaced by another one that does not show any of the pictures, but rather the main logo, but on a white background.
The Fars News Agency, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, indicated that the move came after some of the women whose photos were published requested their removal due to the “lack of coordination” with them in advance.
‘I’m a Mahsa’s mother’
On Thursday, October 13, the Iranian actress Fatemeh Motamed-Arya published a video on social media, in which she demanded, with great emotion, that her image be removed from the billboard.
In the video she is seen without a headscarf, apparently in a car as she was passing Valiasr Square.
“I am Mahsa’s mother, I am Sarina’s mother, I am the mother of all the children who were killed on this land, I am the mother of all Iran, I am not a woman in a land of murderers,” she said in a video clip.
Since Amini’s death on September 16, 2022, three days after her arrest by the morality police, and then transferred to a hospital in Tehran, the protests have not subsided in the country.
Her death has since ignited anger over several issues, including restrictions on personal liberties and strict rules regarding women’s dress, as well as the living and economic crisis facing Iranians, not to mention the strict rules imposed by the regime and its political structure in general.
