Charges are brought against a man from Yonkers. Police say they found an AK-47 in his car. On the same day, a camera caught him outside the home of Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad. She believes the man was there to kill her.
“I’m not afraid for my life, they can kill me because I know they can’t kill the idea of freedom,” Alinejad told Israeli journalist Amichai Stein in an interview. “My message to the Iranian regime is ‘Go to hell! I’m not afraid’” Alinejad said.
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From exile for freedom
For many people in Iran, Masih Alinejad is a role model, but that is exactly what makes her a thorn in the side of the Iranian regime. Masih, who has lived in New York since 2014, fights from exile for the rights of Iranian women in the fundamentalist dictatorship. Every day they receive pictures and videos from their homeland that document the struggle of the activists. Alinejad shares them on social networks: This is how she gives them a voice. Not without danger for the women there: Many have now been sentenced to long prison terms because they publicly rebelled against the headscarf requirement.
Dangerous Rebellion
Your activism is dangerous. Opponents threaten Alinejad and her family with violence and death. Her brother was arrested and sentenced to years in prison. She regularly receives death threats. And so she cannot feel safe even in exile in New York.
Last July, Alinejad released on Twitter and on their platform MyStealthyFreedom a call to protest against the Islamic headscarf. She described the action as a “women’s revolution”.
“We say no to forty years of humiliation against Iranian men and women,” Alinejad said in her appeal. The protest was against “the discrimination and humiliation of the compulsory hijab, not a piece of cloth,” she explained.
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