Iran Protests: Iranians have called for a three-day strike amid contradicting rumors that the regime has abolished the morality police, months after the death in prison of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini sparked major protests. Amini was arrested for inappropriately wearing her hijab.
The rallies, which have turned into one of the nation’s most prolonged challenges to theocracy since the months following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, are refusing to die down, even despite rumors of morality police being shut down.
Iran’s prosecutor general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, announced the abolition of the morality police unit, which was seen as a huge victory for demonstrators.
The interior ministry, which is in charge of the morality police, did not confirm the shutdown, and Iranian state media reported that Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was not in control of the unit.
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Actual demands:
As the status of morals policy, whose major purpose was to impose stringent rules on how people, primarily women, dress and act in public, remained unclear, an Iranian politician stated the government is “paying attention to the people’s true requests,” according to state media.
Iranian media quoted legislator Nezamoddin Mousavi as stating
“Both the administration and parliament insisted that paying attention to the people’s demand that is mainly economic is the best way for achieving stability and confronting the riots.” He made no mention of the purported closure of the morals policy.
Morality police repealed
According to the Associated Press, there has been a reported decline in the number of morality police officers across Iranian cities since the start of protests in which women set their hijabs on fire, knocked turbans off Muslim clerics’ heads, and shouted anti-government slogans, as well as an increase in women walking in public without headscarves, which is against Iranian law.
The official who announced the termination of morality police gave no further specifics regarding the agency’s future or whether the closure was widespread and permanent.
However, he stated that Iran’s court will “continue to watch communal behaviour.”
According to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group monitoring the events, over 18,000 individuals have been arrested as a result of the rallies and the harsh security force crackdown that followed.
The Tehran Rally
Protesters have now called for a three-day strike and a march on Wednesday in Tehran’s Azadi Square. Similar demands for strike action and mass mobilisation have resulted in an increase in disturbance in recent weeks.
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Iran in a brutal cycle?
According to The Guardian, Rob Malley, the US special envoy on Iran, Iran’s leadership has locked itself into a “vicious loop” with its crackdown on demonstrators.
Review of Hijab law
In the midst of all of this, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri has stated that the government is revisiting a decades-old mandatory hijab rule that forces women to cover their heads. In April 1983, four years after the Islamic Revolution that deposed the US-backed monarchy, all women in Iran were required to wear the hijab headscarf.
It is still a highly contentious issue in a country where conservatives believe it should be mandatory and reformists believe it should be left up to individual choice.
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