Hair cut in mourning

More than 100 people, most of whom were from New Zealand’s Iranian community, braved the rain to gather at Wellington’s Cuba St yesterday to protest the death of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini. She died in Iran’s capital Tehran on Friday last week, three days after being detained by the country’s morality police for having some hair visible under her hijab (headscarf). There were also emotional scenes in Wellington when around 10 protesters, including organiser Hanna Habibi and Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, cut their hair as is the Kurdish custom of mourning.