The Iranian regime has ramped up its measures to suppress Iranian women under the pretext of improper veiling.
Most recently 2,000 anti-vice teams have been formed in Gilan Province, northern Iran, to give verbal and practical warnings to improperly veiled women.
Mohammad Abdollahpour, commander of the Quds Corps of Gilan, endorsed the news and reiterated, “The Quds Corps of Gilan stands alongside the Bassij and other forces to promote and revive promotion of virtue and forbidding of vice. The issue of chastity and veiling are not an ordinary issue, but an issue of political significance and security for the country.”
He said some 22,000 forces from the Bassij and Revolutionary Guard Corps of Gilan, patrol various neighborhoods in Gilan on a weekly basis.
On the other hand, Mohammad Reza Eshaghi, the commander of the IRGC branch in Gilan Province, also reported “dealing with 28,328 women” accused of mal-veiling during this year in the province and said the patrols had guided 2,321 improperly veiled women towards moral security and obtained written commitments from them. Legal cases had been filed against 64 women with the Justice Department.
Falahati, the Friday Prayer Leader of Rasht, addressed the issue of improper veiling in a gathering of anti-vice patrols, saying, “Unfortunately, the situation of chastity and veiling in society is undesirable. Some people have gone to the extent that they publicly promote removing the veil,” the state-run Mehr news agency reported on June 4, 2019.
Publication of a video showing state police resorting to brute force against a young woman has shed further light on the scope of crackdown imposed on the Iranian women by the mullahs’ regime.
The video which was shot at an unknown location in the country showed the shocking moment that a woman without a hijab is savagely dragged away by security forces after she and her friends were caught playing with a water pistol.
In the footage uniformed officers can be seen standing around a police car as they attempt to detain a woman.
She struggles against him as he drags her towards the back seat of the waiting police car, but he shoves her in before slamming the door.
Other people on the scene, mostly other girls, are heard screaming and calling for the police to “leave her alone”.
Respondindg to the massive wave of public hatred over the savege treatment of the woman by Iranian security services, Iran’s Attorney General said on Wednesday, July 3, “The Judiciary supports a powerful police force.” Mohammad Jafar Montazeri reiterated: “the Judiciary does not pay any attention to these kinds of propaganda and hype.”
“We cannot sacrifice moral and social security because of things that were said or done by spiteful elements on the internet,” Iran’s Attorney General said.
According to the state-run Mehr News Agency, the cleric encouraged the police and security forces to continue dealing with what he called “social abnormalities”.
“We expect police to deal with abnormalities of any kind,” Montazeri said adding that the Judiciary had a duty to give permits to the police wherever necessary.
Montazeri claimed that videos that showed police brutality or suppression were “pre-prepared”.
This is not the first time that police brutally was caught on camera in Iran.
In related news, another video clip published in social media showed a young woman who had been beaten up by the State Security Force in a metro station in Tehran for improper veiling. The young woman sobs and says that SSF agents had beaten and pushed her to the ground.
It has also been reported that the regime seeks to have patrols stationed in recreational areas in upcoming days to monitor women’s observance of the compulsory veil and give them verbal warnings. (The state-run ISNA news agency – June 24, 2019)
Earlier, Tehran’s Chief of Police, Hossein Rahimi reiterated the need to observe the compulsory veil and said, “Removing the veil and improper veiling are considered among obvious social crimes.” (The state-run ROKNA news agency – June 1, 2019)
Ahmad Alam-ol Hoda, Khamenei’s representative in Razavi Khorasan Province, had also noted that, “Removing the veil and improper veiling are examples of corruption and promote sin.” (The official IRNA news agency – May 30, 2019)
