Iran announced the dissolution of the morality police after almost three months of protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, detained by this unit for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code.
“The morality police has nothing to do with the judiciary” and was suppressed by those who created it, Iran’s Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said Saturday night, the ISNA news agency reported on Sunday. .
“The best way to deal with the riots is to pay attention to the real demands of the people”, mostly related to “subsistence and economic issues”, the spokesman for the presidency of Parliament, Seyyed Nezamoldin Moussavi, said on Sunday, quoted by Isna.
The announcement, seen as a gesture towards the protesters, comes a day after authorities announced they were reviewing the 1983 law on the mandatory headscarf. The rule was adopted four years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which toppled the Shah’s monarchy, and states that both Iranian and foreign women, regardless of religion, have to veil their hair and wear loose-fitting clothing. in public.
Wave
Iran has been engulfed in a wave of protests since the death on September 16 of Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish girl who died after being detained by morality police for not wearing the headscarf correctly.
The authorities claim that Amini’s death was due to health problems, but according to her family, she died after being beaten. Since then, women have led the protests, shouting slogans like “woman, life, freedom”, taking off and burning their headscarves.
undermine values
After 1979, “Islamic Revolution Committees”, under the Revolutionary Guards, patrolled to enforce dress codes and “morals” in Iran.
But the morality police, known as Gasht-e Ershad [patrullas de orientación]was created under the mandate of the ultra-conservative president Mahmud Ahmadinejad [de 2005 a 2013] to “spread the culture of decency and hijab”, the female veil.
Their units are made up of men in green suits and women who wear a black chador, a garment that covers all but the face.