'There's no other option but to fight': Iranian women defiant as 'morality police' return

(BLESSINGS FOR OUR BRAVE SISTERS, and FUCK THE DAMNED THEOCRATIC, WOMAN-HATING PATRIARCHY!!!)


‘There’s no other option but to fight’: Iranian women defiant as ‘morality police’ return

Activists speak of their dismay at renewed patrols to enforce wearing of the hijab, but insist protests will continue ahead of the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death
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Two veiled ‘morality police’ approach women on the streets of Tehran. Some Iranians say they were never really abolished. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images

Deepa Parent
Mon 24 Jul 2023 01.00 EDT

The return of Iran’s infamous Gasht-e-Irshad (“morality police”) has been greeted with dismay, but protesters who spoke to the Guardian said they would not be dissuaded from taking to streets again. A police spokesperson confirmed last week that they had started patrolling the streets to deal with civilians who “ignore the consequences of not wearing the proper hijab and insist on disobeying the norms”. The announcement comes just two months ahead of the anniversary of the death in custody last September of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been detained for allegedly not properly wearing the Islamic headscarf. Her death led to the largest wave of popular unrest in years in Iran.

The Guardian spoke to women who took part in the nationwide protests after Amini’s death, who said they have already seen police harassing girls on the street for not wearing the hijab. “I felt indifferent to the news that the ‘morality police’ have been reinstated. Western media insists on telling us Iranians that Gasht-e-Irshad was abolished, but I don’t know a single Iranian friend of mine who believed that,” says a 22-year-old from Rasht.


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Protests in October 2022 at the Islamic Azad University in Tehran protest after the death of Mahsa Amini. Photograph: UGC/AFP/Getty Images
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Mahsa Amini’s death led to the largest wave of popular unrest in years in Iran. More protests are planned to mark the anniversary in September. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images


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The student added that the move to reinstate the morality police was only to provoke women to go out in protest so they can be arrested as a warning to others. A resident in Tehran said morality police had been noting down the car number plates of women spotted without a hijab. “They have been clicking pictures of me and my friends who have been stepping out without our headscarves. I fear they have already collected enough data to go after us, one by one,” she says.

“I got into an argument with one of them recently outside a court. The agents harshly ask women to wear a hijab and when we refuse, they take our pictures, videos and our ID cards. Then we are summoned to the court. I am still going out without a hijab despite the announcement, because we are too many of us who have now decided to defy the law and fight. “If we fear, they will behave worse and torture more of my people. As an Iranian woman, I say that there’s no other option but to fight. We are not afraid of the morality police.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jul/24/theres-no-other-option-but-to-fight-iranian-women-defiant-as-morality-police-return