2022 Video Of Anti-Hijab Protests In Iran Viral As Stir Against Govt Amid Conflict With Israel

Claim

Iranian schoolgirls remove their hijabs in protest as they chant “death to the dictator and the Islamic regime!” amid the escalating Israel-Iran conflict.

The archived version of the post can be seen here, which has clocked 5.3 million views so far.

Fact

Newschecker ran a reverse image search of keyframes, which led us to a clearer version of the video on YouTube, dated October 4, 2022, as part of a news report. “Students protest in Iran,” read the Spanish title of the video, uploaded by major Mexico-based media outlet Grupo Reforma.

“Protests against repression in Iran have spread to university and school classrooms, where students have removed their hijabs,” read the description of the video. Similar social media posts from October 2022, sharing the 35-second video, can be seen here, here and here, stating that Iranians schoolgirls removed their compulsory hijabs and chanted “death to the dictator” to protest furiously against their country’s authorities.

We came across this report by Albanian-based media outlet, Koha, dated October 4, 2022, sharing a screengrab of the viral video. “Protests in Iran after the death of a 22-year-old woman in police custody have reached another level…Mahsa Amini died on September 16, three days after she was arrested by the morality police for ‘violating the rules of hijab’….,” read the report.

According to an October 4, 2022 BBC report on the wave of protests across Iran, the unrest was reportedly triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who fell into a coma after being detained by morality police on September 13 in Tehran for allegedly violating the law requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab, or headscarf. “She died in hospital three days later. Her family has alleged that officers beat her head with a baton and banged her head against one of their vehicles. The police have denied that she was mistreated and said she suffered ‘sudden heart failure’,” read the report.  

A similar NDTV report, dated October 5, 2022, stated that Iranian schoolgirls came to the fore in protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, removing their hijabs and staging sporadic rallies in defiance of a lethal crackdown by the security forces, which further confirms that the viral video is not linked to the recent escalation of tensions between Iran and Israel that has been seeing both countries trading military strikes since June 13.

Also Read: Israel Shows Old Video To Claim Iranian Attack On Civilians

Sources
Youtube video, Grupo Reforma, October 4, 2022
Koha report, October 4, 2022