Iranian authorities announced Sunday that they would resume enforcing Islamic clothing on women in the country, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Gen. Saeed Montazerolmahdi, a police spokesman, said the morality police would resume notifying and then detaining women not wearing a hijab in public, per the AP news report. Officers of the morality police, who had largely disappeared from the streets following anti-hijab protests late last year, resurfaced in marked vans patrolling the streets.
The announcement came a day after the arrest of Mohammed Sadeghi, a young Iranian actor who had criticized the detention of a woman at the hands of the morality police captured on video, reportedly saying, “Believe me, if I see such a scene, I might commit murder,” the AP report noted. (RELATED: ‘Aren’t We Human?’: Taliban Reportedly Banning Beauty Salons In Afghanistan)
Iran has relaunched patrols by the so-called morality police as authorities escalate their efforts to enforce the country’s mandatory hijab rules https://t.co/gEdKMtXCJt pic.twitter.com/xE8M3e4WHy
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 16, 2023
Nationwide protests against the enforcement of the hijab rule erupted last fall following the death of 22-year-0ld Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the morality police in September 2022, and snowballed into anti-government protests and a denunciation of Iran’s clerical rulers as “corrupt, repressive and out of touch,” per the AP. More than 500 protesters were reportedly killed and nearly 20,000 reportedly detained in the government’s crackdown on the protests.
A recent court verdict on popular Iranian actress Azadeh Samadi that she reportedly must attend psychotherapy sessions designated for sociopathic personalities drew the ire of the Iranian Cinema Directors Association and the Iranian Cinema Producers Union, according to the Iran Front Page News. The professional bodies reportedly said they would stand firmly by Samadi and all actresses who “get unfairly humiliated in a similar way.” There have been other court rulings, including that an accused woman should wash corpses at a funeral home, a social media ban, travel ban, and imprisonment for contravention of the hijab rule, according to Iran International.
Iran’s Ministry of Education reportedly instructed Sunday that learning English was not compulsory. Iran reportedly banned the teaching of English in all primary schools in 2016.