Meeting with Vida Diba, Pegah Moshir Pour and Tina Marinari

In Iran, women face enormous obstacles to living a full and free life. The obligation to wear a veil is one of the most contested regulations in Iran. Disobedience is a brave form of peaceful resistance that has united thousands and thousands of Iranian women in recent years alongside the men that support them. The objective here is not just the veil (or rather, the defence of women’s choice to wear it or not) but the end of the system of oppression – the same objective of the revolts beginning one year ago.

On 13 September 2022, Mahsa Amini was arrested in Tehran by the “morality” police, who regularly subject women and girls to arbitrary detention, torture and other forms of maltreatment for not having respected the discriminatory obligation to wear a veil. She died three days later. Since that day, Iran has been swept up in protests. The meeting will be an opportunity to hear the voices of the Iranian diaspora and of Amnesty International firsthand.

Pegah Moshir Pour and Vida Diba: activists for women’s rights in Iran

Tina Marinari: Amnesty International campaign coordinator

Before the meeting (at 4pm), the film “Be My Voice” by Nahid Persson, endorsed by Amnesty International Italia, will be screened

“Be My Voice” tells of the Iranian women’s campaign against the obligation to wear a veil in public: the platform My Stealthy Freedom collects and communicates their experiences, launched by the exiled Iranian activist Masih Alinejad.