Being a woman in Iran means beginning an endless struggle from the very moment you are born,” Kosar Eftekhari told The Jerusalem Post late on Sunday night.
Eftekhari felt that “endless struggle” from the moment she was forced to wear the chador (Islamic covering) at only eight years old until she left Iran after being shot in the eye by the regime’s security forces for protesting the brutal murder of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian girl Mahsa Amini.
“A country ruled by a misogynistic and anti-human regime called the Islamic Republic is not a place where being a woman is easy,” she commented.
Until she turned 18, Eftekhari lived in Mamqan, a small town in the Mamqan District in the East Azerbaijan province, “where the black chador for women was not a choice, but an unwritten obligation.”
While the majority of women were never brave enough to remove the covering, Eftekhari rejected it despite it making her “the subject of attention in the alleys and streets.” She said she took her strength and bravery from her mother, who fought to be a working woman despite the social pressure and legal discrimination pushing her into the role of housewife.
Eftekhari knew she had to act after security forces brutally murdered Amini
Her love of theater took her from her small town and saw her study in the capital, where the regime’s security forces are most concentrated. Despite this, Eftekhari said she knew she had to act after security forces brutally murdered Amini for the simple crime of not wearing a head covering properly.
“I was certain that I was in danger. I was fighting with empty hands, armed only with my voice, against heavily armed agents of the Islamic Republic,” she said, describing the reality faced by those who participated in the Women, Life, Freedom protests in 2022. “The Islamic Republic was spraying bullets at and killing my unarmed fellow citizens. I expected either to be killed by the bullets of the Islamic Republic, or for us, the people of Iran, to win in the streets and witness the fall of the Islamic Republic, or I thought that even if I were not killed, I would certainly be wounded by the agents of the regime. But until that day, I did not know that the Islamic Republic also shoots pellets into people’s eyes.”
Eftekhari had already spent six days in the national security detention center for participating in the demonstrations, but she continued to attend the protests after she was released.
“Even the smallest gathering, just four people standing together, was enough for the security forces to attack,” she recounted. “They beat people brutally with batons simply for standing together and talking. They arrested them violently, without hesitation.”
On October 12, 2022, she joined a large crowd calling for justice, expecting the same routine beatings and arbitrary arrests she had already experienced but the security forces decided to escalate their force, firing into crowds as a means to disperse protests through intimidation and violence. A pellet was shot directly into her face, blinding her in one of her eyes.
She was taken from the protest by the same security officials who attacked her and transferred to Torfeh Hospital in Tehran, where she said she was kept under intense security conditions. From there, the regime transferred her to Imam Hossein psychiatric hospital, despite not suffering from any psychiatric conditions that would warrant such a hospitalization.
“I did not want to go there at all. It was deeply frightening for me. I was left sitting for hours in a waiting corridor, surrounded by the terrifying sounds of psychiatric patients. It had only been a few days since I lost my eye, and I was already in that environment,” she recounted. “After long, heavy hours, two men in white medical coats came, but they did not feel like doctors. They felt like interrogators.”
The men attempted to pressure her into saying she was suicidal, and were forced to release her when she didn’t bow to the pressure that would have allowed them to institutionalize her.
After that experience, Eftekhari fled Iran to Germany, where she has been repeatedly harassed by supporters of the regime.
“Today I am experiencing frightening things even in Germany. I no longer feel safe here because of the presence of Islamic extremists and supporters of the Islamic Republic. I know that in a democracy, promoting terrorism is forbidden. But how is it possible that in Western countries, groups connected to regimes like the Islamic Republic and organizations like Hamas are allowed to openly spread their propaganda in the streets?” she said, explaining how she was fearful she became at seeing the flags of the same regime that attacked her flown openly in the streets.
Eftekhari was assaulted last week during a demonstration in an interaction that has now gone viral. Recordings of the incident showed men surrounding her while screaming “Allahu Akhbar” (“God is greatest”) and “Khamenei Akhbar” (“[Mojtaba] Khamenei is the greatest”) and a woman with a Palestinian sticker on her face attempted to grab at her.
“A few days ago, I was attacked and beaten in the streets by Islamist individuals and Hamas supporters. My only ‘crime’ was that when I saw the flag of the Islamic Republic, I shouted: ‘The Islamic Republic shot my eye.’ That alone was enough for them to attack me,” she told The Post. “These are people who are not even Iranian, yet Khamenei is like an idol to them. This is dangerous for the West.”
She cautioned, “If European leaders foolishly continue promoting Islamism within their societies, one day in history we will witness the destruction of democracy and human rights in Western countries.”
Eftekhari explained that she wanted to see the same value for human life experienced in the West installed in Iran, though she feared the Islamist extremism enforced in Iran was being imported into Europe.
She said she wanted to see Israel and the US return to striking Iran, but to limit their attacks to military infrastructure and nuclear facilities, so that civilian lives would be largely untouched.
“The lives of the Iranian people are my red line, because I love the people of Iran,” she concluded. “But in my opinion, we have now reached such a level of suffocation that we need targeted military action by Israel and the United States, because for 47 years we have fought a regime like ISIS with empty hands, and we have been killed, executed, and oppressed.”
