Yet all her efforts are not without danger. Plans are being made for Azimi to also talk about the situation in Iran during social studies lessons for havo/vwo students. “But it’s hard for the school to open up to that, and for me too,” she says. “I’m already under threat. The Iranian regime is not just in Iran, it’s all over the world. And I don’t want to take any chances with a school full of students.”
On Sunday, the Iranian government announced that the moral police would be disbanded. The moral police were responsible for enforcing dress codes in the Islamic country. According to Islamic law, women must wear a headscarf and a long coat in public to cover their hair and body contours. However, Azimi does not expect anything to change in Iran after this announcement: “I don’t think it is true.”
While it all started with the death of Mahsa Amini, the Iranian woman who the moral police said wore her headscarf too loosely, the protests are now about so much more than that, Azimi says. “It is no longer about the headscarf, it is about human rights. People take to the streets to protest even if their lives are in danger. They have nothing to lose.”
After moving to the Netherlands as an 8-year-old, Azimi returned to Iran for the first time two years ago. “I called my parents every day crying to say how grateful I was that I could grow up in the Netherlands,” says Azimi. During this holiday she was visiting her cousin, who has a daughter who was fourteen years old at the time. Then Azimi realized the state of freedoms in Iran. “Boys and girls are in different schools. If you don’t listen, you will be beaten by the teacher. If you don’t memorize the Quran, you will also be beaten,” Azimi noted there.
The way back to the Netherlands did not go smoothly after the family visit either. Iranian women need permission from their husbands to leave the country. Or, if they are not married like Azimi, from their father. “I was so angry,” says the Iranian. “In the Netherlands I learn to be very direct, there I had to constantly pay attention to what I said and did. I found that scary. At once I had to be quiet.”
According to Azimi, it is important to make the voice of the Iranians heard abroad. “The United Nations did nothing in the beginning and now they want to start an investigation,” said Azimi. She herself tries to make the voices of the Iranians in the Netherlands heard. “An interview, a wake, or a protest, that’s the least I can do.”
Azimi thinks that the current protests will provide a tipping point in Iran’s history. “You now get to see images of what is happening. This time nobody gives up. Everyone continues to protest and continue with their story.”