JACK JEFFERY
Sun, December 4, 2022
In this photo taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran, Iranians protests the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by the morality police, in Tehran, Oct. 1, 2022. In a report published by The Iranian student news agency, Nezamoddin Mousavi, an Iranian lawmaker said Sunday, Dec. 4, 2022, that Iran’s government was ‘‘paying attention to the people’s real demands,’’ a day after another key official announced that the country’s religious police force had been closed following months of deadly anti-government protests.
CAIRO (AP) — An Iranian lawmaker said Sunday that Iran's government is “paying attention to the people’s real demands,” state media reported, a day after a top official suggested that the country’s morality police whose conduct helped trigger months of protests has been shut down.
The role of the morality police, which enforces veiling laws, came under scrutiny after a detainee, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, died in its custody in mid-September. Amini had been held for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress codes. Her death unleashed a wave of unrest that has grown into calls for the downfall of Iran's clerical rulers.
Iran's chief prosecutor Mohamed Jafar Montazeri said on Saturday the morality police “had been closed," the semi-official news agency ISNA reported. The agency did not provide details, and state media hasn't reported such a purported decision.
In a report carried by ISNA on Sunday, lawmaker Nezamoddin Mousavi signaled a less confrontational approach toward the protests.
“Both the administration and parliament insisted that paying attention to the people’s demand that is mainly economic is the best way for achieving stability and confronting the riots,” he said, following a closed meeting with several senior Iranian officials, including President Ebrahim Raisi.
Mousavi did not address the reported closure of the morality police.
The Associated Press has been unable to confirm the current status of the force, established in 2005 with the task of arresting people who violate the country’s Islamic dress code.
Since September, there has been a reported decline in the number of morality police officers across Iranian cities and an increase in women walking in public without headscarves, contrary to Iranian law.
Montazeri, the chief prosecutor, provided no further details about the future of the morality police or if its closure was nationwide and permanent. However he added that Iran’s judiciary will ‘‘continue to monitor behavior at the community level.’’
In a report by ISNA on Friday, Montazeri was quoted as saying that the government was reviewing the mandatory hijab law. “We are working fast on the issue of hijab and we are doing our best to come up with a thoughtful solution to deal with this phenomenon that hurts everyone’s heart,” said Montazeri, without offering details.
Saturday's announcement could signal an attempt to appease the public and find a way to end the protests in which, according to rights groups, at least 470 people were killed. More than 18,000 people have been arrested in the protests and the violent security force crackdown that followed, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group monitoring the demonstrations.
Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said Montazeri’s statement about closing the morality police could be an attempt to pacify domestic unrest without making real concessions to protesters.
‘‘The secular middle class loathes the organization (morality police) for restricting personal freedoms," said Alfoneh. On the other hand, the “underprivileged and socially conservative class resents how they conveniently keep away from enforcing the hijab legislation” in wealthier areas of Iran's cities.
When asked about Montazeri's statement, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian gave no direct answer. ‘‘Be sure that in Iran, within the framework of democracy and freedom, which very clearly exists in Iran, everything is going very well,’’ Amirabdollahian said, speaking during a visit to Belgrade, Serbia.
The anti-government demonstrations, now in their third month, have shown no sign of stopping despite a violent crackdown. Protesters say they are fed up after decades of social and political repression, including a strict dress code imposed on women. Young women continue to play a leading role in the protests, stripping off the mandatory Islamic headscarf to express their rejection of clerical rule.
After the outbreak of the protests, the Iranian government hadn't appeared willing to heed the protesters' demands. It has continued to crack down on protesters, including sentencing at least seven arrested protesters to death. Authorities continue to blame the unrest on hostile foreign powers, without providing evidence.
But in recent days, Iranian state media platforms seemed to be adopting a more conciliatory tone, expressing a desire to engage with the problems of the Iranian people.
IT WAS WOMEN WHO LED THE REVOLUTION IN 1979
The death of Mahsa Amini unleashed outrage at the government's treatment of women that had long been simmering beneath the surface.
A newspaper with a cover picture of Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being arrested by the Islamic republic's "morality police" is seen in Tehran, Iran September 18, 2022. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS/File Photo
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WOMENWORLD
When Mahsa Zhina Amini — a young Kurdish-Iranian woman — was arrested by Iranian police for not wearing a hijab her brother was told she’d be detained for a few hours and released. Three days later she was dead.
Iran’s notorious ‘morality police’ — whose job it is to make sure women wear veils in public — have been accused of beating Amini, 22, so badly she went into a coma within hours of her arrest and had to be taken to hospital, where she died.
Amini’s death sparked the largest protests seen in Iran since the foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hundreds were killed as thousands marched through the streets telling Iran’s supreme leader and the regime itself to ‘get lost’.
The Iranian government has long been accused of perpetuating gender-based violence. The compulsory veiling mandate, suppression of gender and sexual minority groups, patriarchal family laws, legalisation of child marriage and the lack of laws against domestic violence are only a few examples of the authorities’ general attitude toward women. These countries’ laws have also contributed to vigilante and police violence against women.
As protests about Amini’s death and the treatment of women raged through Iran, a petition to expel Iran from the United Nations Women’s Commission was posted on Change.org, receiving more than 143,000 signatures. It continues to grow. Advocacy bodies have also called on the UN Economic and Social Council to expel Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
Iran is one of six UN member states that have not signed the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. Following arduous years of debate and campaigning by Iranian women’s rights activists, the Iranian parliament passed a bill to join the Convention in May 2003, but conservatives in the government blocked it.
Also read: Why the Iran Demonstrations of 2022 Are Different
The regime’s strict interpretation of Islamic law has been blamed for the lack of action on violence against women. Iran’s laws have enshrined discrimination against women in employment, marriage and citizenship. Still, the fight to recognise violence against women has continued.
In 2021, a new bill on the elimination of violence against women was proposed but has yet to be passed. The bill would make it legally possible to prosecute men who commit violence against women and children, specifically in domestic situations. But conservatives are actively blocking the bill because they interpret it as Western and incompatible with the country’s patriarchal views on gender and family.
While violence against women has no specific legal status, it doesn’t mean that it goes unpunished. It does, however, make it difficult to charge a perpetrator in an Iranian court. This lack of recognition means reporting violence against women, including domestic violence, is rare and official support for victimised women is scarce. The situation is made more difficult by the lack of official statistics. The numbers that are reported by government officials are widely believed to be inaccurate.
The lack of legal and formal recognition also does not mean violence against women is not discussed. It has, in fact, attracted a lot of scholarship, activism and public attention. While organised activism against violence against women in Iran has remained risky, it does exist.
Organised and publicly visible activism to end violence against women has been part of the Iranian women’s movement’s agenda but has largely remained unorganised. By remaining scattered and disorganised, the women’s movement is less vulnerable to attack and suppression. The atmosphere of risk and fear has given rise to different forms of implicit and grassroots activism. Social media and #MeToo activism have specifically been grassroots initiatives and reliant mostly on ordinary Iranians.
On the other hand, social media campaigns and cultural productions are forms of resistance and disobedience that can create a smaller scale societal impact, called implicit activism. Implicit activism is a less public form of activism and is common in countries where political or human rights activism is risky and the identities of activists must remain hidden.
There are signs of activism having a nationwide impact. While state-run Iranian TV mostly offers homogeneous and traditional portrayals of women on screen, and normalises discrimination, Iranian cinema has addressed the issue in more depth. Violence against women and the problems of gender-based discrimination have been recurring themes in Iranian post-revolutionary cinema.
Also read: Interview With Iranian Artist Parastou Forouhar: ‘The Regime Is Anti-Women’
In 2022, 800 women working in the film industry, including well-known actors and movie directors, signed an open letter known as the “800-signature campaign,” in which they condemned what they considered systematic and structural sexual violence and harassment against women working in the film industry, from within the industry.
Substantial attention has also been given to violence against women in academic scholarship. The number of master’s and doctorate-level dissertations written on women’s issues, including violence against women, has been so overwhelming that universities have discouraged students from researching the topic, especially as the findings and policy implications are rarely taken up by authorities. Studies conducted by prominent Iranian researchers such as sociologist Shahla Ezazi and legal scholar Mehangiz Kar have been influential to a new generation of scholars who continue to form a vast body of work on the topic.
As Shahla Ezazi says, much attention has been given to individual factors and interpersonal relations as the underlying cause of violence against women. This approach depoliticises the problem and is essentially a survival strategy. Researchers often use individual and family-oriented analysis that often finds social factors like addiction, unemployment, lack of and education to be correlated with committing violence against women, allowing them to discuss the issue without upsetting the state.
While tackling violence against women in Iran requires extensive social and cultural reform, there seems to be a growing consensus among activists and ordinary Iranians that the most prominent obstacle to progress is the nation’s traditionalist view on gender.
Gender politics, such as the compulsory veiling law, are a fundamental part of the national identity. Reform has been impossible, leading many Iranians to believe that fundamental changes will not be possible unless the regime collapses — a central demand in the ongoing uprising.
Ladan Rahbari is an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam and a senior researcher at the International Migration Institute (IMI). She is a member of Amsterdam Young Academy and a board member of the Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS).
The author declares no coflict of interest.
Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.
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