A few days after the death of Mahsa Amini after being arrested by the Morality Police for not wearing the Islamic veil properly began to appear on the streets of Tehran women with bare heads, and it was inevitable to ask: and the hijab?
“It’s my way of protesting,” a woman who was walking without the veil through the center of Tehran told EFE shortly after Amini’s death on September 16, 2022, which sparked protests that would shake the country for months.
to the cry of “woman, life, freedom” Many Iranians took to the streets, protested in universities or schools and burned veils to show their rejection of the Islamic Republic, which responded with a repression which caused 500 deadthousands of arrests and the execution of seven protesters.
A year later, the Islamic Republic has not been able to fully reimpose the use of a garment that it considers a non-negotiable symbol, and Many Iranian women continue without covering themselves as a gesture of civil disobedience in the face of a political system they consider oppressive..
These gestures of defiance occur despite a repression that resorts to confiscating cars, denying public services, closing businesses, punishing such as cleaning up corpses, or deploying patrols that warn women to cover themselves.
“Abnormal”, “virus”, “social disease” or “sexual depravity” These are some of the terms that the authorities have used to refer to women who do not wear the veil.
“It’s my decision to cover up or not,” he tells EFE a middle-aged businesswoman, whom we will call by the fictitious name of Maryam to maintain her anonymity.
In the establishment she runs in the Iranian capital, she allows the presence of women without a veil, a garment that she herself does not wear, something that constitutes a crime.
“If they close the store for a few days, nothing happens,” he says in a defiant tone.
repressive measures
For months, the Islamic Republic focused on quelling the protests unleashed by Amini’s death and in April, once the revolt was controlled, it turned its sights to the reimposition of the veil, mandatory in the country since 1983.
As a first step, the Iranian Police announced the use of cameras and smart tools to identify women who do not wear the hijab in public places, a measure now questioned since experts believe that the country does not have the necessary technology to do so.
What was carried out was the identification of women driving without veils, thanks to their car license plates, and the confiscation of the vehicle of repeat offenders.
That was the case of Tina, a 39-year-old woman from Tehran, who They confiscated her car for driving naked and it took him 15 days to recover it after paying a fine.
Despite this, she still does not wear the hijab and posts photos on her social networks of how she plans to go out on the street “dressed in Western style”, that is, without a veil, short sleeves and jeans.
vigilante patrols
In mid-July, authorities went a step further by deploying patrols to warn women that “they wear extraordinary clothes” or “insist on breaking the rules” and have become ubiquitous in places with high foot traffic.
Dressed in the traditional chador, their faces behind a mask and accompanied by two police officers, those in charge of imposing the veil limit themselves to drawing attention to uncovered women without taking further action.
In interactions that EFE observed on the streets of Tehran, some of the women put on their veils with a serious gesture, many took them off a few meters ahead, and others ignored the warning.
toughening of the law
But the regime wants to go further with the “Bill to Support the Culture of Chastity and Hijab” which aims to toughen the penalties for non-use of the Islamic garment, which provides prison sentences of up to five yearsthe prohibition of driving and accessing banking services, among other punishments.
“The bill can be described as a form of gender apartheidas the authorities appear to govern through systematic discrimination with the intention of subjecting women and girls to submission,” said a group of UN experts about the legislation being studied in Parliament.
(With information from EFE)
Source-www.infobae.com