Fighting Tyranny With Art

In October last year an anonymous Iranian artist poured <a href="https://twitter.com/hdagres/status/1578498400621760512?s=20&t=l1bcaZgsYih4hM64Lj3wUA" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">red dye</a> into the fountains in Fatemi Square in Tehran to make the pool of water look like blood. Before the authorities had a chance to drain it away images of the red fountains were quickly shared on social media. It was one of the many small but eye-catching acts of protest that Iranian artists had made over the previous couple of months in response to the murder of a young woman called Zhina Mahsa Amini. On a trip to Tehran Amini was picked up by the so-called ‘morality police’, the henchmen of the supreme leader of Iran, the chief cleric Ayatollah Khamenei, for female dress-code violations. All women are required by law to have their hair covered with a hijab in public in Iran. Although Amini was wearing a head covering, she wasn’t wearing it ‘properly’ apparently. The police bundled her into a van where she was beaten up. She fell into a coma, and died a couple of days later. The government claimed she died of a pre-existing condition. This murder was the spark that lit yet another burst of protests in Iran against the hardline religious regime which has held power there since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Iran is a sham democracy,  <a href="https://medium.com/counterarts/fighting-tyranny-with-art-d40ef8522ec9">Visit Now</a>