Long Beach Councilwoman Suzie Price, Councilwoman Stacy Mungo and Councilman Al Austin made a request to the city manager on Tuesday to work alongside the city attorney to write a statement of solidarity with the Iranian protesters against the government for the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
The council voted unanimously to write the statement.
Mahsa Amini was arrested by Iran’s Guidance Patrol on Sept. 13, for improperly wearing the hijab according to the government’s standards.
Three days later on Sept.16, Amini died in a hospital in Tehran from a cerebral hemorrhage. The Iranian government claims that Amini had a heart attack and underlying health problems. Eyewitnesses, which including fellow women detained with Amini, however reported that she was severely beaten by the Guidance Patrol.
Exhausted from injustice and inequality caused by the religious state, Amini’s death has sparked a protest all across Iran from women and men alike.
“The brave women of Iran took to the streets, and they are, every day, fighting for something that many of us take for granted,” Councilwoman Price said. “They’re fighting for basic autonomy, personal freedom, to be considered equal and dress as they choose.”
Price said topic is personal, since her mother left Iran to provide a better future for her family with the access to the freedoms in the United States. She said that while in the U.S. people are able to protest without concern, many of the women in Iran along with male supporters are beaten and killed for attempting to stand against the system.
The people in Iran need the support of citizens in the U.S. to fight right now, to fight the dictator said Price.
Sunny Zia, an elected trustee of Long Beach Community College District Board of Trustees, spent high school and college in Iran from 1991 to 1999. She said that those years are difficult to explain the hardships and turmoil during that time.
“In my junior year in high school, my friend a 16-year-old Bahara Busahani was killed at the hands of this regime because she wasn’t wearing a piece of cloth on her head properly,” Zia said. “During my last hours in Iran during 1999, I witnessed my classmates be beaten to death and imprisoned because they stood up for secular freedom.”
Zia said that it was her goal to fight for those individuals that suffered under that regime and for those that are still suffering under it when she moved to the U.S. She said it is time to stand-up for those without a voice fighting a system that prevents them from having the freedoms they deserve.
After the comments had finished, the council voted unanimously to draft the statement of solidarity.