Regretting that it is less and less respected, the Iranian police have announced that they have stepped up checks on the compulsory wearing of veils by women in the street.
Mandatory veiling since 1979
“The police in Tehran, as in other provinces, will intervene against individuals who promote (…) not wearing the veil”, warned General Abasali Mohammadian, the capital’s police chief, on television. Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, women have been obliged to conceal their hair in public places.
But more and more women are appearing without veils, particularly since the protest movement sparked in September 2022 by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, arrested for violating the country’s strict dress code.
This 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Iran, died in hospital. She had been arrested three days earlier by the morality police for violating the dress code which requiring women to wear a hijab covering the head and neck in public places.
A merciless hunt for the unveiled
Following this event, in April 2023, Iranian police are already beginning to use “smart” cameras to track down non-veiled women in public spaces. If a female passenger in a car breaks the dress code, the vehicle owner risks seizure. More than 150 stores, restaurants and banqueting halls were closed within 24 hours.
In May, the government proposed a bill aimed at stepping up sanctions, including financial penalties, against “anyone removing their headscarf in public places or on the Internet”, without advocating imprisonment. This proposal to reclassify the removal of the hijab, currently a crime, as a misdemeanor, arouses controversy, particularly among ultraconservatives.
In July, the police reinstate patrols to punish non-veiled women. A journalist who interviewed Mahsa Amini’s father and went bareheaded in public was jailed several times. Pop singer Mehdi Yarrahi, author of a song urging women to remove their headscarves, was arrested at the end of August. On September 5, Mahsa Amini’s uncle was also detained, but his whereabouts remain unknown, according to Kurdish sources.
Women who fail to comply with strict code “prosecuted”
Even today, women “who have not heeded previous police warnings will be given special attention and prosecuted”, warned General Mohammadian. This tougher stance comes just days after a speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, who reiterated that all women must respect the wearing of the veil, regardless of their beliefs. “The hijab issue has now become a challenge imposed on our country; it’s a problem that didn’t exist before”, he laments.
The morality police, a unit that has not been abolished
He questions the “intervention of foreigners”, particularly Westerners, in supporting women who refuse to veil. The morality police, who were behind Mahsa Amini’s arrest, had disappeared from the streets since the start of the September 2022 protests, but the unit has never been formally abolished by the authorities.
Numerous local media report that in recent months, police had seized vehicles carrying women without veils and punished their owners. The authorities have also closed down cafés and restaurants where the wearing of the hijab was not respected by employees or customers.
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