Iran is once again deploying police officers on the streets to enforce its conservative dress code for women, which many have violated since the protest movement that rocked the country last fall, according to state news outlets and social media posts.
Months after the protests, Iran quietly withdrew its morality police from the streets in an apparent concession to try to calm nationwide anti-government unrest. The protests began last September after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, died in custody after morality police accused her of violating the dress code and arrested her on a Tehran street.
A spokesman for Iran’s police, General Saeed Montazer al-Mahdi, said on Sunday that police officers would start patrolling with immediate effect to “deal with those who, regardless of the consequences of clothing that is not up to standard, unfortunately still persist in the breaking the rules. the norm.” He added that the patrols would “increase public safety and strengthen the foundation of the family”.
He said police would first warn people caught violating the dress code, which requires women to cover their hair and wear long, loose clothing that hides the shape of their bodies. Those who still refused to obey, he said, would be prosecuted.
It was unclear whether authorities were redeploying the vice squad — a force that an official said had been dismantled in December — or whether they were requiring regular police to do what the vice squad once did.
The massive anti-government demonstrations first focused on the mandatory hijab law, then spread to a variety of grievances, including other social restrictions, corruption, rising inflation, a perpetually faltering economy and political repression. The move turned into the biggest challenge in decades for Iran’s entire system of authoritarian administrative rule.
Women tore off their headscarves and burned them, dancing in front of the flames. Many refused to put them back on even after the protests subsided amid a government crackdown that saw thousands of protesters arrested, hundreds killed and at least seven executed. University students chanted, “To hell with the morality police!”
For months, the government largely looked the other way as bare heads proliferated in Iranian cities, hemlines shortened and more Western clothing appeared on the streets.
But the hijab is too important a symbol of Iran’s ultra-conservative Islamic system of government to completely let go of its clerical leadership, and while some conservatives called for compromise, others urged the government to do more.
Earlier this year, authorities began shutting down businesses they accused of serving customers who did not wear hijab, announcing that they would, among other things, use surveillance cameras to track down women who violated the dress code.
In recent weeks, several celebrities have been prosecuted for breaking the law, including Azadeh Samadi, an actress who appeared unveiled at a funeral two months ago, according to local news reports. She was banned from social media and ordered to see a psychologist to get written proof that she was not a sociopath.
Another woman caught driving without a hijab in Varamin was sentenced to a month of washing and preparing corpses for burial, the reports said.
After Sunday’s announcement, it didn’t take long for the promised patrols to reappear. That night, several photos of police officers and the white vans they use to transport detainees to law enforcement centers were published on Gershad, an application and Twitter account initially created by anti-government activists who crowdsource police patrol user reports so people can avoid those areas. Users had seen the vans near Tehran, Iran’s capital, and in the cities of Kermanshah and Shiraz.
Gershad continued Twitter that a user had submitted a photo on Sunday of two female police officers standing by a white van outside a shopping center in eastern Tehran. They warned passing women about wearing their hijab incorrectly before entering the mall, it said.
State news media pushed back such reports in an apparent attempt to downplay the new measure.
Tasnim, a semi-official news agency, said vice squad vans would “under no circumstances” take to the streets, though it acknowledged that police would once again enforce the hijab law.
If a video appeared on social media claiming police officers force people into vans, Tasnim said, “it’s either fake or from an archive.” The report further suggested that the purpose of such videos would be to undermine the government.
Nevertheless, the vans, whether or not provided with the logo of the vice police, are widely viewed with fear and anger by many Iranians. One of those videos sparked outrage on social media when it went viral over the weekend. It showed a woman in a chador — the long black cloak usually worn by conservative Iranian women and female vice police officers — pulling a woman who was not wearing her headscarf into a van.
“Help, help,” shouts the woman being pulled along in the video.
But Javan, a newspaper affiliated with Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, declared the video “fake” on Monday, saying it and similar videos were “circulated to create a confrontation between women and the government.”
For many Iranian women, the broader confrontation over the hijab has already been resolved – decisively in their favor. There is no going back to the days before the protests, they have said repeatedly in recent months.
Shiva, 44, a translator in Tehran who asked to be identified only by her first name to avoid legal repercussions, said she expected the new crackdown to play out differently in different neighborhoods depending on how socially liberal they already were.
“How long are we going to endure this pushing and shoving?” she said. “The taboo on the veil has been broken in our society. On the other hand, the regime is cruel.”
In an indication of how inflamed the hijab issue has become, both the Iranian news media and social media buzzed Monday about the violent arrest of Mohammad Sadeghi, a theater actor who had vehemently criticized the new crackdown on a Instagram live stream at the time of his arrest.
“If my friend, my sister and my mother want to wear clothes in a certain way, it has nothing to do with you,” Sadeghi said, addressing the government and calling for resistance.
Soon after, police raided his home, leading to a fight in which he tried to escape from a window while screaming for help. It was no use: Mr. Sadeghi was soon taken into custody.