Iranian authorities are subjecting women to widespread surveillance to enforce the obligatory headscarf, even inside vehicles, and then imposing punishments, Amnesty International said yesterday.
The Islamic republic’s leadership was in 2022 shaken by mass protests that saw women denounce the dress code, but has made clear it has no plan to abandon hijab rules imposed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Amnesty International said in a report, based on testimony from more than 40 women inside Iran published ahead of International Women’s Day tomorrow, that women were being targeted with “widespread surveillance” in public spaces and “mass police checks” targeting female drivers.
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Pictures captured by surveillance cameras or reports from plainclothes agents using police app Nazer identify license plates of vehicles with female drivers or passengers deemed to have contravened the rule, it said.
The women then receive text messages ordering them to report to the police and hand over the vehicles as punishment, it said.
Hundreds of thousands of such orders to impound vehicles have been issued, it added.
The vehicles can be released in some cases after 15 to 30 days once “arbitrary” fees are transferred and written pledges obtained to observe compulsory veiling, the report said.
“In a sinister attempt to wear down resistance to compulsory veiling ... Iran’s authorities are terrorizing women and girls by subjecting them to constant surveillance and policing,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, denouncing the “draconian tactics.”
Authorities have also conducted mass random checks, with police pulling over drivers to check if their vehicles are to be confiscated, the report said.
Access to transport, airports and banking services is regularly denied and made conditional upon women wearing a headscarf, Amnesty International said.
Those defying the rule face prosecution and in January a young woman, Roya Heshmati, was punished with 74 lashes for going unveiled in public.
Protests erupted in September 2022 following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly contravening the hijab rule.
The demonstrations subsided in the face of a crackdown that saw hundreds killed and thousands arrested.
Iran’s parliament in September last year passed the “Bill to Support the Culture of Chastity and Hijab,” which increases punishments for those who violate the rule.
It now awaits approval from the Guardians Council supervision body.
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