Brother Of Collapsed Building’s Owner Shot Dead In Iran
The brother of Hossein Abdolbaghi, whose poorly-constructed building recently collapsed in southern Iran and killed dozens of people, was shot dead by unknown assailants Saturday.
The brother of Hossein Abdolbaghi, whose poorly-constructed building recently collapsed in southern Iran and killed dozens of people, was shot dead by unknown assailants Saturday.
A video from a CCTV camera was released on media showing a car, which apparently was following Majid Abdolbaghi’s vehicle as it went into the parking lot, stopped in front of a building, as one man started shooting with a handgun from the front seat and another one got out of the car and started shooting from behind the car. According to reports Abdolbaghi succumbed to injuries after he was taken to hospital.
The Metropol twin towers collapsed on May 23 burying more than 80 people under the rubble, with about 42 bodies recovered. Soon after the collapse it became apparent that the owner and builder, Hossein Abdolbaghi, was a powerful and politically well-connected businessman who had disregarded regulations and building codes, backed by officials, who might have had their own financial interests.
Following the incident, Iranian media initially reported that Abdolbaghi, who was reportedly connected to Iran’s top security official Ali Shamkhani, had been arrested, but the government later announced that he had died in the collapse. The public did not believe the claim and many said that he escaped and corrupt officials, who had allowed him to violate building regulations, wanted him to disappear.
In June, reports came out that a physician who refused to cooperate in the alleged coverup had died mysteriously.
Earlier in the week, Iran’s prosecutor general issued an indictment against 20 people accused in the case of the Metropol incident.
Bokharai also warned in an interview with the moderate Rouydad24 news website that excessive restrictions on society is likely to lead to revolts. He further warned that the government-fabricated bipolarity might lead to conflicts between ethnic groups.
The sociologist said the government's strict control over the media leaves no room for critics of hardliners dominating the government.
During recent weeks the government has unleashed its so-called chastity squads to crackdown on women who do not wish to observe compulsory hijab. Patrols and roadblocks by the morality police and vigilante hardliners have led to a series of confrontations in the streets and on public transport with women who are seen as not fully covering their heads and bodies.
In several social media videos men and women are seen confronting each other and pushing one other out of trains and buses as government’s forced hijab enforcers try to intimidate women for their “lose headscarves”.
While Iranian reformists and some well-known regime apologists call these conflicts “social bipolarity” between two groups of people, many Iranians on social media point out that this is in fact a conflict between the government and those who oppose it. They accuse the apologists of portraying a political problem that is occurring because of the despotic and totalitarian nature of the Islamic regime as a divide between two segments of the Iranian society.
Although the conflict is wider than the issue of hijab, most recent cases, including the one in a video posted by moderate cleric Rahmatollah Bigdeli on Twitter, involved intimidation by government hardliner supporters linked to the IRGC and other parts of the core of the fundamentalist regime. At least in one case a young woman who argued against compulsory hijab with an enforcer was arrested and the woman who confronted her and was pushed out of a bus, was praised by several religious officials and the state television as a hero.
Ahmad Abdollahi a religious official in Esfahan charged that women who are against the idea of compulsory hijab are the same women who keep dogs as pets and get rabies from their dogs!
Reformist activist Majid Tavakoli says, "Bipolar divisions are created by the government to give the sense of power and supremacy to its supporters who fight for the regime's survival." Another Twitter user argued that "A bipolar conflict takes place between two equal forces. But when one side has all the power and the other side is absolutely powerless, what the latter does is resistance."
Bokharaei said that such bipolarity might also occur in economic and cultural spheres as the government highlights and boosts divisions between insiders and the rest of the population. Pointing out that clusters of people are being formed at both ends of this bipolarity, and the government is constantly supporting one of the poles against the other, the sociologist warned that the escalation of these divisions might pose a danger for the clerical regime far more serious and detrimental that it could ever imagine.
Bipolar situations give way to disillusionment and eventually push society toward a quick implosion, he warned.
The new campaign began with an Instagram story by reformist activist and sociologist Mohammad Reza Jalaeipur on July 20 when he urged religious women who wear the hijab by choice to oppose the government's pressure on other women to comply with forced hijab.
Jalaeipur’s story went viral and tens of thousands of hijab-wearing women either shared his story or posted their own pictures with the hashtag “I wear the hijab but am against morality police patrols”.
The campaign which is a separate initiative from the anti-hijab campaign launched earlier this month by women’s rights activists has angered many hardliners.
Meanwhile, in a statement Friday, fifteen prominent Iranian figures who are usually referred to as “religious intellectuals”, some of whom have a background in Shiite seminaries condemned the government policy of compulsory hijab and suppression of women.
They also urged religious scholars to display solidarity with Iranian women and condemn forced hijab and tools of suppression such as morality police’s hijab enforcement patrols.
However, hardliner clerics did not mince words in their Friday sermons, calling those who campaign for freedom of choice traitors.
Jalaeipur, a practicing Muslim, has long been speaking against the government's policy of forcing all women to abide by the prescribed hijab rules and argues that imposing these violates the rights of the majority citizens who are against compulsory hijab.
“When are you going to accept that the policy of compulsory hijab has failed and when exactly are you going to revise it?” Jalaeipur had challenged the authorities for a response in a Telegram post on June 27.
Iran’s government which is now fully controlled by hardliners has adopted a harsher than usual approach amid economic crisis and hardship for tens of millions. Government and military officials have warned the population a disobeying hijab rules and the morality police hijab enforcement patrols have detained many women, sometimes violently, on the streets.
The government also designated July 12 as the Hijab and Chastity Day this year and celebrated it with gatherings of women with full hijab at stadiums and other public venues.
Hundreds of thousands have supported the anti-hijab campaign on social media in the past few weeks. Many women have shot videos of themselves with uncovered hair in public places and posted the videos on social media with the ‘No2Hijab’ hashtag to display civil disobedience in reaction to the government’s harsh treatment of women for hijab.
Several activists have been arrested for their defiance of the hijab rules in July including Souri Babai-Chegini, a civil activist who published a video of herself removing her hijab, and Nazi Zandieh, a twenty-one-year-old student who also supported the anti-hijab campaign.
Officials usually insist that complying with hijab rules is “the demand of the majority of Iranians”.
Several surveys in the past few years, including a survey by Gamaan polling agency in the Netherlands, show that more than 50 percent of all Iranians and 75 percent of citizens in larger cities including the capital Tehran, oppose the compulsory hijab rules.
Results of surveys conducted by Iranian government agencies are usually not made public but according to Mehdi Nasiri, the former managing director of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, a survey carried out by the ministry of Islamic guidance in 2015 showed that more than 70 percent of Iranians did not agree with compulsory hijab.
