• Mahsa Amini was a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died in police custody three weeks ago.
•  Her family says they have been threatened with death and told not to join the protests.
• Erfan Mortezai is a Peshmerga fighter for the Iranian Kurdish opposition party Komala.

The family of Mahsa Amini was a 22-year- says they have been threatened with death and told not to join the protests. Kurdish woman who died in police custody three weeks ago. Her death sparked protests all over Iran.

Mahsa became a symbol of repression in Iran after the morality police arrested her for wearing her hijab wrong and putting her in jail. Everyone in the world knows her face and her story.

“Our family has been under a lot of pressure from the Islamic Republic’s officials,” her cousin Erfan Mortezai tells me when we meet across the border in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. “We don’t talk to human rights groups or channels outside of Iran and we don’t tell anyone from the outside world about her death.”

Erfan is a Peshmerga fighter for the Iranian Kurdish opposition party Komala, which is based in Iraq but is an exiled group. He has been trying to bring down the Islamic Republic for years, long before Mahsa died. The Iranian government has said that these outside forces are to blame for the recent unrest.

Mahsa Amini’s family in Iran, including her father and uncle, have denied many times that they help separatist Kurdish opposition groups.

As we talk in the shade of the mountains, he calls her by her Kurdish name, Zhina, which is what her friends and family always called her. Mahsa is her official Iranian name. Her parents had to give her this name because some Kurdish names are not allowed in Iran.

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