April 16, 2023
Iranian authorities plan to prosecute
people who encourage women to remove their headscarves and have also installed
cameras in public places and on highways to catch violators of the country’s
strict dress code, according to local media and a senior judicial official.
As part of the effort to step up
enforcement, police sent thousands of messages to businesses and car owners
warning them to comply, a spokesman told state media on Sunday.
Iran’s police chief announced last
week that the cameras would be installed, saying women caught without
headscarves — or hijab — would first be warned and then face unspecified
charges. Additional cameras, including on roadways, were installed Saturday,
local media reported.
The country’s deputy attorney general
also warned Saturday that prosecutors would charge those who urge women to take
off the veil, which is compulsory in Iran.
“The punishment for the crime of
promoting and encouraging others to remove the hijab is much heavier than the
crime of removing the hijab itself,” Ali Jamadi said, according to the Mehr
news agency, adding that it was a clear example of “encouraging corruption,” a
crime in the Islamic Republic.
He did not say what the punishment
would be, only that the offense would “be dealt with in the criminal court whose
decisions are final” and not subject to appeal.
The moves are part of a wider
crackdown on women who have flouted the law on dressing conservatively and
follow a months-long protest movement started in part by the death in September
of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was detained by morality police in Tehran for
alleged violations of the dress code. She died in police custody, prompting an
outpouring of anger and nationwide demonstrations against Iran’s clerical
leaders. Security forces killed
some 500 people in the ensuing crackdown, according to the activist news agency
HRANA, and detained more than 20,000. In February, Iran’s supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced a broad amnesty for certain prisoners, and in
March, Iran’s judiciary announced that some 22,000 people arrested during the
protests were pardoned.
But rights activists say the
government provided no confirmation that all of the detainees were released. To
qualify for the amnesty, some protesters had to post bail or sign papers
apologizing for their alleged crimes, according to rights groups and several
recently pardoned prisoners who spoke with The Post.
According to Shiva Nazarahari, an
activist who works with the Volunteer Committee to Follow-Up on the Situation
of Detainees, an informal network inside and outside of Iran, the pardons were
issued in part to ease international and domestic pressure on authorities over
the crackdown. They were also announced to help Iran’s already overcrowded
prisons cope with the influx of thousands of new detainees, Nazarahari said.
But even as authorities sought to calm
the unrest and release some prisoners, they also stepped up enforcement of the
mandatory dress code for women, including in schools, on university campuses,
at businesses and in public places.
From March 6 to April 5, for example,
authorities closed at least 458 businesses — including recreation centers,
hotels and restaurants — because employees or customers were wearing “improper”
hijab, according to HRANA.
Earlier this month, a video went viral
of a man dumping yogurt on the heads of a mother and daughter, one without a
veil and one whose hair was partially covered, in a shop in the city of
Mashhad. In the footage, taken by a security camera, the shop owner is then
seen chasing the man out. Prosecutors charged both the man and the two women,
the latter for not complying with the conservative dress code, state media
reported.
Police spokesman Saeed Montazer
al-Mahdi told the state news agency IRNA on Sunday that law enforcement had recorded
“hundreds” of cases of unveiled women traveling in cars over the previous 24
hours — and had sent text messages to the vehicles’ registered owners. The
report did not say where the alleged violations took place or if the cases were
recorded using the new cameras.
Mahdi also said police had closed 137
shops and grocers and 18 restaurants for repeated violations of the religious
dress code, and had sent out messages to some 3,500 businesses warning them to
comply.
Earlier in the week, the Mizan News
Agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, published an announcement
reminding the public that under the law, cars are not considered private spaces
in which women can remove their hijabs.
Mahdi said those who ignore the
initial warning will have their cars impounded.
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