As Iran’s presidential vote looms, tensions boil over renewed headscarf crackdown
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Seemingly every afternoon in Iran’s capital, police vans rush to major Tehran squares and intersections to search for women with loose headscarves and those who dare not to wear them at all.
The renewed hijab push, which police are calling the Noor — or “Light” — Plan, began before President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash, and whoever wins a vote to replace the hard-line cleric on Friday will have an influence over just how intense it becomes — and how Iran responds to any further unrest.
“We know the police are not eager to fight women, but they are under pressure to,“ said Fatemeh, a 34-year-old math teacher who gave only her first name for fear of reprisal. “Sooner or later, the authorities will realize that it would serve their interests better to pull back.” After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, some of the women who helped overthrow the shah embraced the even more conservative chador. But others protested a decision by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to order women to wear hijabs in public. In 1983, it became law, enforced with penalties including fines and up to two months in prison.
Already, “tens of thousands of women have had their cars arbitrarily confiscated as punishment for defying Iran’s veiling laws,” Amnesty International said in March. “Others have been prosecuted and sentenced to flogging or prison terms or faced other penalties such as fines or being forced to attend ‘morality’ classes.”
So far among the presidential candidates, only Pezeshkian has criticized the hijab law. Others, including current parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, asked for the law to be implemented in a softer way. Candidate Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a Shiite cleric, criticized the use of violence against women, saying police should use “the language of trust and gratitude” rather than the baton.
پاکستان تازہ ترین خبریں, پاکستان عنوانات
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