{"id":107719,"date":"2022-12-25T08:35:13","date_gmt":"2022-12-25T13:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=107719"},"modified":"2022-12-25T08:35:13","modified_gmt":"2022-12-25T13:35:13","slug":"iran-curbs-morality-police-amid-protests-uses-other-oppressive-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2022\/12\/25\/iran-curbs-morality-police-amid-protests-uses-other-oppressive-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Curbs \u2018Morality Police\u2019 Amid Protests, Uses Other Oppressive Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON \u2014 <\/span>There are new indications that Iran\u2019s Islamist rulers have constrained their morality police force that sparked nationwide protests in September, but researchers say the curtailment is not universal and merely reflects a shift in government tactics for suppressing dissent.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn larger Iranian cities like Tehran, a reduced presence of the morality police has been observed and reported to us,\u201d said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights group, in an interview for VOA\u2019s latest Flashpoint Iran podcast.<\/p>\n

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\"FLASHPOINT<\/div>\n
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FLASHPOINT IRAN: How Detained Iranian Activists Inspire Protesters With Peaceful Defiance Under Pressure<\/a><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In an email sent to VOA on Friday, Roya Boroumand, co-founder of Washington-based rights group, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, said she has received anecdotal evidence that the morality police are not deployed in some of the Iranian capital’s wealthy neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s reformist state-approved news site\u00a0Ham-Mihan<\/em>\u00a0presented a similar picture in a\u00a0December 5 article<\/a>, reporting that the morality police\u2019s ubiquitous white-and-green striped vans had not been seen on Tehran streets since September 16.<\/p>\n

That was the date that Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, died in morality police custody three days after they arrested and \u2014 according to activists \u2014 beat her for allegedly not wearing her hijab in accordance with strict Islamist rules. News of her death sparked continuing nationwide protests in one of the greatest challenges to Islamist rule in Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Ham-Mihan<\/em>\u00a0article said the entrance of Tehran\u2019s morality police building on Vozara Street also has been closed or partially closed since September 16.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s ruling Shiite clerics have required all women and girls older than 9 to cover their hair in public since the 1979 revolution. They established the morality police to enforce those rules in the mid-2000s.<\/p>\n

The aggressiveness of morality policing in Iran fluctuated over the years, but it had\u00a0toughened<\/a>\u00a0under Iran\u2019s ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi, who took office in 2021.<\/p>\n

The outrage in Iran about the alleged violent treatment of Amini by the morality police, and the rapid transformation of that outrage into demands by protesters for an end to Islamist rule, appear to have pressured the government into scaling back some morality police activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIranian security forces are stretched and their strategy, in Tehran at least, may be to not aggravate the public by detaining one girl walking with no headscarf, for example. They probably don\u2019t want to be filmed dragging someone unveiled into a van,\u201d Boroumand said. \u201cBut the security forces are not necessarily retreating in the face of protesters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amiry-Moghaddam said Iran\u2019s leaders have prioritized the deployment of those forces to control the most significant protests in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey also are trying to rebuild their fearsome public reputation that has fallen down since the beginning of the protests. And one way they do that is through death sentences for and executions of protesters,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Women emboldened<\/strong><\/p>\n

In another indication of morality policing being curtailed in Iran\u2019s main cities, women in those cities appear to have become more emboldened to flout mandatory hijab rules.<\/p>\n

VOA\u2019s Persian service has observed an increasing number of videos being posted on social media this month, showing what appear to be women in Tehran with their hair uncovered in public. VOA cannot independently verify the locations and dates of the videos as it is barred from reporting inside Iran.<\/p>\n

One clip shared on Twitter by the London-based Persian network Iran International on December 11 shows the backs of two women without hijabs walking together along a street. The network\u2019s tweet said it received the video from a male audience member who identified the women as his wife and her sister and said they were walking on Tehran\u2019s Enqelab Street, a major thoroughfare in the capital, on the evening of December 10. The male narrator of the clip ends it by saying the popular protest slogan \u201cWoman. Life. Freedom\u201d in Persian.<\/p>\n

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