Iran’s regime has stated that women who defy the country’s dress codes will be subjected to a “hijab removal treatment clinic.” [véu islâmico]”. The announcement was made by Mehri Talebi Darestani, head of the department of women and families, linked to the body that promotes virtue and prevents vice.
Human rights and women’s rights groups protested against the intention announced by the ministry and recalled that it is subordinate to Tehran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A young Iranian woman interviewed by the British newspaper The Guardian on condition of anonymity said that Tehran’s intention is not to hold a clinic, but a prison.
“We are fighting to survive and facing blackouts, but it is a piece of fabric that worries this State. If there’s ever a time for all of us to get back on the streets, it’s now, or they’ll arrest us all,” she said.
Iranians are currently living with power blackouts scheduled by the government due to a natural gas supply crisis in the country.
The announcement of the so-called treatment clinic comes weeks after reports of the arrest of a university student who allegedly stripped naked in protest against the strict dress code imposed on women in the country.
The case was reported on the 2nd of this month by the NGO Amnesty International. She was violently arrested at the Islamic Azad University in Tehran. A video shared on social media shows her being forced into a car by men in plainclothes.
Human rights organizations link the two cases to what happened to Mahsa Amini, 22, who died in 2022 after being arrested by the country’s moral police.
She had been detained for allegedly not wearing the hijab, the Islamic headscarf, correctly, and according to her family, was beaten to death by security forces – the regime claims she died of a heart attack.
The episode mobilized the entire country, and the demonstrations that followed were considered the greatest threat to the ayatollahs’ regime since the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
The administration reacted harshly, and human rights organizations say that clashes between security forces and protesters during the protests left more than 500 deaths, 71 of which were minors. When the situation cooled, Tehran carried out seven executions linked to the acts.
An Amnesty International report published last year further stated that Iranian authorities “have subjected victims’ families to arbitrary arrests and detention, imposed cruel restrictions on peaceful gatherings at gravesites, and destroyed victims’ tombstones.”
