Iran: Justice to Consider Mandatory Veiling

Will this decision satisfy the anger or revive it? Iran’s parliament and judiciary are working on making the veil mandatory for women, the prosecutor said, quoted by the Isna news agency on Friday.

“We had a meeting with the parliamentary committee on culture on Wednesday and we will see the results in a week or two,” ultra-conservative attorney general Mohammad Jaafar Montazeri said in a speech in Qom, south of Tehran. But he has not yet specified what could be changed in the law, and whether this change was aimed at tightening or weakening the rules.

New restrictions with Raissi

For his part, President Ebrahim Raisi, also very conservative, said this Saturday in Tehran during a conference: “Our constitution has firm and unchanging values ​​and principles (…). But there are ways to implement the constitution that can be changed.” He has also already introduced new clothing restrictions. This summer, in particular, he passed a law according to which a mandatory headscarf for women should cover not only the hair, but also the neck and shoulders.

The topic is explosive in Iran. The country was in turmoil following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who died on September 16 after being arrested by the vice police for violating the Islamic Republic’s dress code requiring women to wear a veil in public. Iranian women led the protests, shouting anti-government slogans and taking off and burning headscarves. More and more women are baring their heads, especially in the upscale north of Tehran.

The protest movement is brutally suppressed. The Supreme National Security Council said on Saturday that “more than 200 people” had been killed in two and a half months of protests. This number includes, according to the official Irna agency, “the death of civilians and security forces, the victims of clashes between opposing factions, rioters and counter-revolutionary and separatist groups.”

For its part, the non-governmental organization Iranian Human Rights (IHR) estimates that at least 448 demonstrators have been killed since the violently suppressed movement began. About 14,000 people, including children, have been arrested in the crackdown on protests in Iran, according to the UN.

The veil became mandatory in 1983, four years after the 1979 Islamic revolution. Spreading a culture of propriety and the hijab.”