ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian security forces have increased their presence in the country's Kurdish-majority western regions (Rojhelat) on the fourth anniversary of Zhina (Mahsa) Amini's death in the custody of Iran's so-called morality police, with Kurdish opposition parties calling for a general strike and rights groups reporting arrests.
A coalition of six major Iranian Kurdish opposition parties last week called on residents and shopkeepers across Rojhelat to join a general strike on Wednesday to mark four years since the passing of Amini - a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Iran's Kurdistan province who died in a Tehran hospital on September 16, 2022, three days after morality police detained her for allegedly violating the country's mandatory hijab laws.
In Amini's hometown of Saqqez, in Rojhelat's Kurdistan province, rights groups say authorities have deployed large numbers of security forces, anti-riot units, motorcycles and military vehicles, while sealing roads leading to Aichi Cemetery, where she was laid to rest.
Kurdpa, an independent outlet focused on Rojhelat, reported Tuesday that heavily armed forces were patrolling major squares and entry points to Saqqez, including routes from Baneh and Sanandaj in Kurdistan province and Bukan in the nearby West Azerbaijan province.
Dozens of security personnel and unmarked vehicles had effectively blocked the main roads leading to Aichi Cemetery, the outlet added, noting that Iranian authorities have also released water from the Cheragh Weis Dam for the third consecutive year, flooding secondary routes to the cemetery to prevent access. Kurdpa also noted the construction of additional surveillance towers along the Saqqez-Aichi road and near the cemetery.
Another prominent rights group, Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, also reported heightened security measures across Rojhelat ahead of the anniversary, documenting the arrest of at least four Kurdish business owners from West Azerbaijan in an apparent bid to head off the general strike.
Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) relayed that two Kurdish men from Sanandaj - Jalal Khoda-Moradi and Mohsen Hossein-Panahi - were arrested after being summoned in connection with the planned strike. Their whereabouts and any charges against them remain unknown, the monitor said.
Amini’s September 2022 passing ignited the largest nationwide protests Iran had seen in decades, known as the Jin, Jiyan, Azadi - or Woman, Life, Freedom - movement.
The Oslo-based Iran Human Rights in September 2023 verified that at least 551 protesters were killed during the uprising, including 68 children and 49 women. At least 22 additional protesters, including four children and eight women, died in what the watchdog described as suspicious suicides.
In the lead-up to this year's commemoration of Amini's death, Iran's police chief, Ahmad Reza Radan, warned on Sunday that security forces would show “no leniency” toward anyone who challenges the state in public spaces.
“We are in wartime conditions, and if anyone, at the invitation of the enemy, tries to create insecurity inside the country, we will deal with them. We will show no leniency in this regard,” Radan said in a televised interview with state media.
The Jin, Jiyan, Azadi protests were followed by at least two further waves of unrest in Iran in late 2025 and early 2026, sparked by the collapse of the national currency and a deepening economic crisis.
