US President Joe Biden said Iranian women should be able to wear whatever they want.
Image: AP
The US President was impressed by the scale of the protests in Iran triggered by the death of a young woman. “It triggered something that I don’t think will be settled for a long, long time,” he said in California.
uS President Joe Biden has called on the Iranian leadership not to use violence against the protests in the country. “Iran must end violence against its own citizens, who are simply exercising their basic rights,” said Biden during an appearance in the city of Irvine, California on Friday (local time). Women and men should have the right to freedom of expression and association, Biden said. And women “should – for God’s sake – be able to wear what they want,” he said. “Nobody should tell them what to wear.”
In Iran, people have been taking to the streets for weeks. The protests were triggered by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in mid-September. The moral police had arrested her because of her allegedly “un-Islamic outfit”. What happened to Amini after that is unclear. The woman fell into a coma and died in a hospital on September 16. Critics accuse the morality police of using violence; the police deny it. Since the woman’s death, thousands have been demonstrating across the country against the government’s repressive course and the headscarf requirement.
Biden was impressed by the scale of the protests triggered by Amini’s death. “It triggered something that I don’t think will be settled for a long, long time,” he said.
