ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran has been intensifying its crackdown on Iranian women and girls defying the country’s strict hijab laws, Amnesty International warned in a new report released on Wednesday.
Widespread antigovernment protests engulfed Iran in September 2022 following the death of Zhina (Mahsa) Amini while in police custody over allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s hijab laws.
In the wake of the protests, which took place both internationally and domestically, some politicians in Iran and reports suggested that the rules had been slightly relaxed. There were also signs that the controversial morality police, which had detained Amini, would be abolished - though this was never confirmed by Iranian authorities.
However, protests soon died down months later and Amnesty reports that the regime has doubled down on its response to violations of the dress code since April.
“The Iranian authorities are doubling down on their oppressive methods of policing and severely oppressing Iranian women and girls for defying degrading compulsory veiling laws,” the rights watchdog said.
Spokesperson of Iran’s police, Saeed Montazer-Almahdi, announced that police patrols would return to enforce the compulsory hijab.
“Additionally, countless women have been suspended or expelled from universities, barred from sitting final exams, and denied access to banking services and public transport,” the report stated.
“The morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary and has been closed from the same place it was established in the past,” Iran’s attorney general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying in December. This was never confirmed by other officials.
“Morality policing in Iran is back. The authorities are not fooling anyone by removing the insignia of the ‘morality’ police from uniforms and patrol vans,” Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said.
“Today’s crackdown is intensified by mass surveillance technologies capable of identifying unveiled women in their cars and pedestrian spaces,” Callamard added.
Women have been obliged to cover their heads with a veil since the Islamic revolution of 1979 which saw the formation of the current regime.
During the protests last year, the veil had become a symbol of Iranian women’s struggle, with images and videos of them removing their headscarves going viral. Shortly after the protests erupted, posts on social media showed women sitting in public without a headscarf, suggesting that the laws may have been relaxed.
“The intensified crackdown on unveiling reflects the Iranian authorities’ deplorable disregard for the human dignity and rights of women and girls to autonomy, privacy and freedom of expression, religion, and belief,” Amnesty said.
Amnesty said that hundreds of businesses have been forcibly shut down for not enforcing the hijab laws. A draft bill was proposed to parliament in May, titled “Bill to Support the Culture of Chastity and Hijab” aimed at issuing fines, penalties, salary cuts, dismissal from work, and confiscation of cars against women who do not abide by the dress code in public spaces.
Owners of businesses who allow employees or customers without a veil will also face penalties or prison sentences under the proposed bill.
“The international community must not stand idly by as the Iranian authorities intensify their oppression of women and girls,” Callamard urged.
