Iran announced the abolition of the morality police After almost three months of protests unleashed by Mahsa Amini’s deathdetained by this unit for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code.
“The morality police has nothing to do with the judiciary” and was suppressed by those who created it, the attorney general of IranMohammad Jafar Montazeri, the ISNA news agency reported on Sunday.
The announcement, seen as a gesture towards the protesters, comes a day after authorities announced that they were reviewing the 1983 law on the mandatory headscarf.
The standard was adopted four years after the islamic revolution of 1979, which overthrew the Shah’s monarchy.
Iran has been engulfed in a wave of protests since the death on September 16, Believea 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish girl who died after being detained by the morality police for not wearing the veil correctly.
The law states that both Iranian and foreign women, regardless of their religion, have to veil their hair and wear loose-fitting clothing in public.
Authorities say the death of Believe was due to health problems, but according to his family, died after being beaten.
Since then, women have led the protestsshout anti-government slogans, take off and burn their veils.
“Woman, life, freedom” is one of the slogans that has been heard the most.
The movement continues despite the repression by the authorities, which has left hundreds dead.
“Undermine values”
After 1979, “Committees of the islamic revolutionReporting to the Revolutionary Guards, they patrolled to enforce dress codes and “morals” in Iran.
But the morality police, known as Gasht-e Ershad [patrullas de orientación]was created under the mandate of the ultra-conservative president Mahmud Ahmadinejad [de 2005 a 2013] to “spread the culture of decency and hijab”, the female headscarf.
Their units are made up of men in green suits and women who wear a black chador, a garment that covers all but the face. The first patrols started working in 2006.
Gasht-e Ershad was created at the time by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, now led by ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi, elected in 2021.
In July, Raisi called for the mobilization of “all institutions to reinforce the law on the headscarf”, stating that “the enemies of Iran and of the Islam want to undermine the cultural and religious values of society.
The role of this police has changed over the years, but it has always generated divisions in the political class.
Under the moderate President Hasan Rohani, in power from 2013 to 2021, it was common to see women in tight jeans and colorful veils.
But his successor, ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisi, in July called on “all state institutions” to strengthen enforcement of the headscarf law.
“The enemies of Iran and of the IslamThey wanted to “undermine the cultural and religious values of society by spreading corruption,” he declared at the time.
Women who violated this strict dress code risked being arrested by the police unit.
veil law
Prosecutor Montazeri announced on Saturday that “parliament and the judiciary” were examining the issue of making the veil compulsory, although he did not specify whether the law would be modified.
The issue of the veil is still very delicate in the Islamic Republic. On one side are the conservatives, who defend the 1983 law. On the other, the progressives, who want women to be able to decide freely whether to wear it or not.
Since the start of the protest movement, more and more women have taken to the streets without the headscarf, especially in the affluent north of Tehran, the capital.
The main reform party of Iran urged on September 24 to annul the mandatory use of the veil.
Iran accuses the United States and its allies, as well as its arch-enemy Israel, of being behind the protests, which it calls “riots.”
According to a latest balance released by Iranian General Amirali Hajizadeh, of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, more than 300 people have died in the demonstrations since September 16.