Woman Life Freedom is the English form of a slogan first shouted in Kurdish as Jen, Jiyan, Azadi at the burial of Jina Mahsa Amini in Saqqez, then in Persian as Zan, Zendegi, Azadi. This archive groups 1401, Mahsa Amini, and 2022 nationwide labels here. The rising began because the Islamic Republic's morality police seized a young woman for "improper hijab" and she died in their hands. Compulsory hijab is a post-1979 state order. It is not Iranian custom. Women had already fought it in March 1979. That earlier fight has its own note.¹

Death of Jina Mahsa Amini

The Kurdistan Human Rights Network's Farsi investigation records the sequence families and witnesses gave. On 22 Shahrivar 1401 (13 September 2022), Jina, 22, from Saqqez, was in Tehran with her brother near Haqqani metro. Morality-police officers pulled her into a van for "bad hijab," insulted her, and beat her. She was taken to the Vozara detention house. She left that building unconscious, was moved to Kasra Hospital with head trauma and brain death, and died on 25 Shahrivar (16 September). Officials first said she had a heart attack. Her mother told reporters, "They killed my angel."¹

KHRN describes the later court file as a cover: the state denied blows to the head, harassed the family, and prosecuted journalists who reported the death. The slogan Jen, Jiyan, Azadi left the Aichi cemetery in Saqqez and crossed the country. Women pulled off scarves. People threw stones at Khamenei's image.¹

The streets

HRANA's 626-page Farsi file on the first 82 days (26 Shahrivar to 16 Azar 1401) counted protest in 1,162 places, 160 cities, and 143 universities, in every province. It listed 481 probable dead, including 68 children, an estimate of 18,242 arrests, and 1,988 verified videos. People were not asking for a milder morality police. They were rejecting the structure that made the scarf a crime.²

How many people were killed

The Islamic Republic published no honest list. Iranian monitors did.

Iran Human Rights, writing in Farsi a year later, had confirmed 551 protesters killed by security forces, including 68 children and 49 women, plus 22 further suspicious deaths. The heaviest provinces in that file were Sistan and Baluchestan, Tehran, Kurdistan, West Azerbaijan, and Mazandaran. Most of the named dead were shot or beaten.³

Hengaw, counting only Kurdish citizens, named 142 dead in the same rising, including 16 children, 6 women, and 8 Yarsani. That Kurdish list is a subset, not a rival total.⁴

HRANA's 82-day "probable" 481 and IHR's later confirmed 551 should not be averaged. One is an early working file. The other is a later named minimum. Both sit above what state television would admit.

The single deadliest day in that cycle was 30 September 2022 in Zahedan. It has its own note.

This archive

"1401 uprising," "Mahsa Amini protests," and Woman Life Freedom labels are gathered here. Individual funerals stay on item pages. March 1979 dress-code protests stay on their own note. They are the start of the same demand, not the same week.