Iran to install cameras to identify unveiled women
Police say they will not tolerate “any form of individual or collective behavior and action” that violates the law.
Iranian authorities install cameras in public places and roads to identify and punish unveiled women.
Once identified, offenders will receive “text warnings about the consequences,” police said in a statement Saturday.
The move is aimed at “preventing opposition to the hijab law,” the statement said, carried by the judiciary’s Mizan news agency and other state media, adding that such opposition tarnishes the country’s spiritual image and spreads insecurity.
The police statement said it “will not tolerate any form of individual or collective behavior and action that is contrary to the [hijab] law”.
The announcement came amid growing anger among the country’s powerful religious elite over the relaxation of mandatory hijab rules since anti-government protests erupted last September.
Defy the law
Since the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in the custody of the so-called “morals police” last September, a growing number of Iranian women have shed their veils. Mahsa Amini was detained for allegedly violating the country’s dress code for women.
Her death sparked a wave of anti-government demonstrations that swept the country for months. Security forces acted violently against the demonstrators.
Yet risking arrest for defying the mandatory dress code, women are still widely seen unveiled in malls, restaurants, shops and streets across the country. Videos of unveiled women resisting vice squads have flooded social media.
Saturday’s police statement called on business owners to “seriously enforce compliance with societal norms with their careful inspections.”
Under Iranian law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are required to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothing to disguise their figure. Violators have faced public reprimands, fines or arrests.
The veil is described as “one of the foundations of civilization of the Iranian nation” and “one of the practical principles of the Islamic Republic,” according to a March 30 Interior Ministry statement that there would be no retraction on the issue.
It urged citizens to confront unveiled women. Such guidelines have encouraged hardliners to attack women in recent decades. Last week, a viral video showed a man throwing yogurt at two unveiled women in a store.