Jina, Kurdistan, and a voice That Will Not Be Silenced

Four years have passed since the days of September 2022; four years since the day when the name of Jina Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman from Saqqez, became one of the most widely recognized names of protest in Iran and around the world. But to understand what happened in Iran after Jina’s death, we cannot look only to Tehran and other major cities. We must return to Saqqez; to Kurdistan; to the place where this movement began and from which it quickly crossed geographical and political boundaries.

For many, Jina is more than just a name. She is a reminder of a reality that has been pushed to the margins of Iran’s official narrative for decades: the reality of her Kurdish identity. Jina’s Kurdish name has often been overshadowed in official accounts and media by the name “Mahsa.” For many Kurds, this is not merely a difference in names. It is part of a broader experience of denying and restricting Kurdish cultural and linguistic identity.

This is precisely why it is impossible to speak about the situation of women in Iran without speaking about Kurdistan and other regions that have experienced multiple forms of discrimination. A Kurdish woman in Iran faces not only gender discrimination. Her national identity, mother tongue, and cultural belonging also exist within a system that refuses to fully recognize the country’s national and linguistic diversity. On one side, she confronts laws and structures that restrict women’s freedom and autonomy; on the other, she faces a system that marginalizes her national and cultural identity and rights. The result is a form of compounded subordination, an experience that has still not received sufficient attention in many mainstream narratives of the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement.

For me, as a Kurdish woman, this is not merely a political or historical issue. It is part of the experience of a generation that has learned that gender discrimination and national discrimination cannot always be separated from one another. A woman fighting for her right to choose and a people struggling to preserve their language, culture, and identity are, in many circumstances, confronting the same structures of denial and repression.

Perhaps this is why “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” was never merely a protest slogan in Kurdistan. The phrase has deep roots in the struggles of Kurdish women and, following Jina’s death, became a rallying cry across Iran.

What happened in September 2022 should therefore not be understood simply as a spontaneous reaction to the death of a young woman. The uprising emerged from a landscape shaped by deep social, political, and economic grievances. Yet its beginning in Kurdistan carried a particular significance. From the earliest days, the people of Saqqez and other Kurdish cities showed that they did not see Jina’s death as an isolated incident, but as a symbol of accumulated discrimination and repression. That anger then spread from Kurdistan across Iran and became a shared demand for freedom and equality.

From this perspective, “Women, Life, Freedom” is not merely the name of a protest movement. It is a point where several historic demands converge: women’s freedom, an end to political repression, equal citizenship, and recognition of Iran’s diverse identities.

The movement did not end in September 2022. The protests and strikes that followed, including in Kurdistan, demonstrated that what had emerged was not simply a short-lived wave. The region’s long tradition of civil and political resistance continued, while a new generation began expressing its demands through new language and new forms of action.

But the price of this resistance has been enormous.

Over the past several years, large numbers of protesters across Iran have been killed, injured, or arrested. Many political and civil society activists, including Kurdish activists, have faced severe judicial sentences and the threat of execution. Kurdistan has also repeatedly been one of the main centers of intensive security repression.

Behind every name and every number is a human being: a family that has lost someone it loves, a mother waiting for her child, or a young person who has lost years of their life behind prison bars. Reducing these people to statistics is one of the most brutal forms of forgetting.

Repression has not always stopped at Iran’s borders. In recent years, the bases and positions of Iranian Kurdish opposition parties in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq have been targeted by attacks carried out by the Islamic Republic, resulting in casualties. For many activists and members of Kurdish political parties, leaving Iran was not a simple choice or a purely personal decision. It was the consequence of circumstances that deprived them of the possibility of political activity and, in some cases, even of a normal life.

But exile is not the end of suffering.

For many of those forced to leave Iran, life abroad comes with uncertainty, economic hardship, exhausting bureaucracy, and, most painfully, separation from family. Behind words such as “refugee,” “exile,” or “migrant” are the lives of people who have lost their homes, their jobs, their security, and sometimes years of their lives.

Separation from a child is not something that can be measured in statistics. A mother (like me and the others) living in another country, not knowing when she will be able to hold her child again, is not simply an “immigration case.” She is a human being whose life has been trapped by geographical and political distance.

Under such circumstances, the struggle for freedom is not merely a struggle against a particular law or institution. It is a struggle against a system that seeks to separate people from their right to choose, from their identity, and from their dignity.

For this reason, the question of women cannot be separated from the question of Iran’s non-Persian national communities. Nor can we speak about women’s freedom while remaining silent about the cultural, linguistic, and political freedoms of millions of people.

If freedom exists only for one part of society, it is not freedom.

If equality does not embrace different identities, it is not equality.

And if justice draws distinctions among the victims of discrimination and oppression, it is no longer justice.

One of the most significant developments of recent years has been the emergence of this shared understanding among a new generation. A generation increasingly asking: Why should the freedom of a woman be separated from the freedom of a Kurd, a Baluch, an Arab, or any other citizen? Why should the right to choose what to wear be separated from the right to learn and live in one’s mother tongue? And why should the demand for gender equality be placed in opposition to demands for national and cultural rights?

These questions show that Iranian society is redefining its relationship with the concept of freedom.

For a Kurdish woman, “Women, Life, Freedom” means more than freedom from compulsory hijab. The slogan can carry a broader meaning: the freedom to choose one’s way of life, the freedom to speak one’s mother tongue, the freedom to preserve one’s identity, the freedom to participate politically, and the freedom to live without being treated as a second-class citizen because of one’s gender or identity.

That is why Jina’s legacy should not be sought only in the streets of September 2022. Her legacy lies in the change she helped create in the consciousness of society; in a generation that no longer regards many of the old red lines as sacred and is less afraid to ask questions that were once forbidden or dangerous.

Four years after Jina’s death, perhaps the most important question is not whether the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement has achieved all of its goals. The more important question is whether Iranian society can ever be returned to the conditions that existed before the uprising.

In my view, the answer is no.

Something has changed in Iranian society.

The women who continue to stand for their right to choose despite pressure and threats, the young people who have moved beyond fear, and those who no longer regard discrimination against different identities as something normal are all part of this transformation.

Jina came from Saqqez, but her voice did not remain in Saqqez.

Her name travelled from a small city in Kurdistan to the streets of Iran and then to the world. A slogan rooted in the struggles of Kurdish women became a shared language for millions of people. That fact alone demonstrates that what happened in September 2022 was more than a protest. It was a crack in a wall that had been built for decades upon fear, discrimination, and silence.

History has taught us that no authoritarian system, no matter how powerful or permanent it believes itself to be, can last forever. Governments that build their survival upon repression, discrimination, and denial may endure for years, but they cannot silence forever the will of a society that demands freedom and dignity.

One day, the Islamic Republic will become part of the history of authoritarianism in Iran. But the question of that day will not simply be how to bring a government to an end. The greater question will be what kind of future is built afterward.

The Iran of the future must be a country where no woman is treated as a second-class citizen because she is a woman, no Kurd because they are Kurdish, and no human being because of their language, identity, beliefs, or place of birth.

For me, “Women, Life, Freedom” is not merely the name of an uprising. It is the name of a future that has yet to be built; a future in which freedom is not a privilege granted to some, but a right belonging to everyone.

And until that day comes, Jina’s name will not simply remind us of a death. It will remind us of the beginning of a path that can no longer be forced back into silence.