Iran Focus
London, 18 Aug – More than 4,400 clothes shops were shut down in 2015 for violating the strict morality code in Iran, according to a leading official in the State Security Forces.
Hossein Sajedi-Nia, Commander of the State Security Forces said that they offered “indecent apparel violating public morality”.
He was addressing a meeting on August 12 on “virtue” which was about finding new ways to clamp down on women’s “immodest” dressing.
He said: “The current status of the hijab and virtue does not conform to an Islamic society. The monitoring of women’s veiling over the past 15 years indicates that the situation has gradually worsened.”
Tehran’s prosecutor Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi also commented that Iran had failed in its attempts to suppress women.
He said: “24 departments have responsibilities [in the areas of chastity and public morality]. Despite the fact that specialized courts have been set up in Tehran to encounter these types of offenses, a lack of coordination among relevant departments, has prevented progress.”
Jafari-Dolatabadi said that people who did not abide by the strict morality codes were prominent in public places.
According to the state-run news agency ISNA, Tehran’s Prosecutor-General called on public officials to deal with “offenses against public chastity and morality” following remarks from the supreme-leader Ali Khamenei in July.
Khamenei said: “Any discussion over the voluntary or mandatory nature of the Hijab (women’s veil) is deviatory, and does not have any place in the Islamic Republic…. If it turns out that something is religiously unlawful (haram), the Islamic regime is duty-bound to stand against such haram.”
The Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran has condemned this “backward” position on women’s rights.
They said that the regime is escalating its oppression of women in response to growing protests.
Their statement said: “They know, however, that this will only foment the Iranian people’s fury against the regime as manifested in the protests by various strata of society.”
