Dler Khurshidi (Lab) wants Kongsberg to honour Jina Amini, the young woman who died in the custody of Iran’s morality police in 2022.
He envisages a street, or a section of Magasinparken down by the river. Khurshidi even believes that something like this would be noticed in Iran.
The proposal comes in a parliamentary question to Mayor Line Spiten (H) ahead of the municipal council meeting on 18 November. Khurshidi, who himself has an Iranian background, asks whether the mayor will take the initiative to find a place that could bear her name.
“No one deserves to be killed by the police, who are supposed to protect us,” he tells Laagendalsposten.
Amini was 22 years old and Kurdish. She was arrested in Tehran in September 2022 for not covering her hair sufficiently in accordance with the Islamic Republic’s rules. Three days later, she was dead. Her death sparked the largest protests in Iran in many years, under the slogan ‘Woman, life, freedom’.
For Khurshidi, it is about women’s right to choose for themselves. Iran forces women to wear the hijab, he points out.
He also highlights that the regime has begun to attack Europe directly. On Monday, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was behind the cyberattack which, in October, raised the temperature in refrigerators and freezers in around 700 French shops. Food was spoiled, and several fires broke out. Food retail chains in Denmark and Sweden have also been hit by similar attacks, but it is not clear who was behind them.
“When the regime threatens our food security, we must respond with the democratic means at our disposal,” says Khurshidi.
“If Kongsberg supports something like this, I think it will attract attention in the Iranian media. “That way, we’ll show the democratic opposition that they’re being noticed,” he tells the newspaper.
He does not expect any opposition in the municipal council, but reckons there may be some debate regarding the regulations.
Kongsberg would not have been the first in any case. In September 2024, Frankfurt in Germany named a square Jina-Mahsa-Amini-Platz.
The Labour Party politician envisages that there could also be parks or streets named after Ukraine or Gaza. He could well imagine a park for ‘international Kongsberg’, where different sections have different names.
