Iran Suspends Students, Enforces Mandatory Hijab At Campus
A week after the reopening of universities in the Iranian new year, authorities have once again begun arresting student activists refusing to wear hijab.
A week after the reopening of universities in the Iranian new year, authorities have once again begun arresting student activists refusing to wear hijab.
Security forces and plainclothes agents have been deployed at the entrance of the universities to prevent uncovered women from entering, including at Tehran University of Arts, where reports claim “veiled women covered them with shawls”.
The student organizations of the University of Arts called these measures "cheap, insulting and intolerable" adding that large numbers of female students were denied entry for refusing the mandatory hijab. Many girls at universities across the country have received warning texts as the country announced new surveillance measures to catch hijab rebels this week.
Students of Noshirvani University of Babol reported that the messages read: "It has been observed that your clothing in the university environment is not in accordance with the norm announced by the ministry of science and university."
In Al-Zahra University of Tehran, in addition to preventing the entry of students who refuse to observe the mandatory hijab, officials notified all students of the "dress code regulations" on the university portal.
Rules specifically stated that the hijab "must cover their hair and neck" and "short, tight, torn, and unbuttoned clothes and pants are not allowed".
While numbers of arrests are hard to verify in the secretive republic, more than 20,000 Iranians have been arrested since unrest began in September, according to rights group Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
Ali Nesaei also said managers in both public and private sector are responsible for enforcing the hijab rules in the workplace. “If this happens in parks it is the municipality that is responsible. The same applies to universities,” he said at a press briefing while holding the police responsible for controlling the streets and businesses.
Nesaei added that civil servants will be referred to disciplinary committees even if they shed the hijab outside work and that in accordance with article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code they will initially have to pay a cash fine of over 10m rials ($20 or one fifth of minimum wage) for the first time they are charged with violating the hijab law. Vehicles could also be impounded from one to twenty days, if occupants are seen violating the dress code, he said.
Further infringements will entail more cash fines and deprivation from certain “privileges”, he said, referring to threats of seizing drivers’ licenses, passports, etc.
On Friday chief of Iran's law enforcement, Ahmadreza Radan, said that from April 15 police will use CCTV and facial recognition technology to document violation of hijab rules and provide the evidence to the judiciary for legal action against violators.
Radan said after only one warning, vehicles of those who remove their hijab in their vehicles will be “electronically impounded”, clamped on the street, or taken to a parking, while businesses, including restaurants, malls and catering halls will be shut down.
Hardliners keep insisting that most Iranians agree with hijab rules. “It’s good to [announce that] the hijabless will be photographed and that eventually they will be deprived of the privileges they have in the country…and punishments will be meted out to them. They cannot complain in the future because they have been warned,” said lawmaker Ahmad Karimi-Esfahani Monday while claiming that 90 percent of Iranian agree with hijab rules.
Encouraged by some clerics such as Ahmad Alamolhoda, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative in Khorasan-e Razavi Province, vigilantes have been attacking hijabless women. Earlier this month, a video of a man pouring a tub of yogurt on the head of a woman in Mashhad went viral on social media and outraged many. Another video has emerged that shows a man, accompanied by several other men and women, beating a woman with his prayer beads.
A man beating a hijabless woman with his prayer beads, apparently after a quarrel over hijab.
“The whistle warning has been blown about the consequences of polarizing [the society over hijab] and pitching people against each other, but hardliners are still not listening,” reformist Shargh Daily said in a commentary Monday.
It appears that conservatives are also aware of the consequences but have been unable to prevent hardliner regime loyalists from going too far to avoid instances such as those seen in the videos of physical assaults that could be embarrassing and backfire against the regime.
In a commentary Saturday, the Basirat weekly of Khamenei’s political representative in the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) admitted that too much emphasis on the issue could potentially cause people’s confrontation with the regime while accusing the opposition and its media of using hijab controversies to polarize the society and create unrest.
Hijab has been a very controversial issue in Iran for nearly ninety years. The founder of Iran's Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Shah, banned the hijab in January 1939 despite the strong opposition by clerics but a few years later under his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi the ban fell into oblivion.
Only five months after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, then leader of Iran Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini banned hijablessness in government offices. The ban gradually spread to the entire society within the next two years.
Moineddin Saeedi, a member of the Iranian Parliament from Chabahar in Sistan and Baluchistan Province, criticized the police’s move to use traffic cameras to identify women removing hijab. He said, "If these cameras can detect crimes to such an extent, why are we currently facing the poisoning of girls?"
He added that the use of modern technological capabilities should be prioritized on issues such as delinquency, theft, pickpocketing, extortion and poisoning of female students.
Multiple girls’ schools in the capital Tehran, Karaj, Khoy and Orumiyeh (Urmia) in the West Azarbaijan province, and Sanandaj in Kordestan province were attacked by poisonous chemicals Monday, a week after the schools reopened following New Year holidays.
On Sunday, people in the Kurdish majority city of Saqqez -- the hometown of Mahsa Amini whose death in the hands of hijab enforcers ignited the current uprising – held a rally with security forces reportedly opening fire to disperse the protesters.
The demonstrations occurred after at least six girls’ schools in the city were attacked by the mysterious gas. On Monday, shop owners refused to open their businesses in protest against the regime’s inaction or possible involvement in the poisonings.
Since last week, scores of schoolgirls have been taken to hospital with symptoms of gas poisoning, such as difficulty in breathing, nausea, headache and muscle cramps.
Shocked by the news of the death of a Kurdish teenager, Karo Pashabadi, who died as a result of an attack on a Tehran school, innumerable social media users have started asking questions about the fate of those who are being hospitalized due to the phenomena.
Sixteen-year-old Karo, from the city of Kamyaran in Kordestan province, was laid to rest in Pashavah village about a month after inhaling poisonous gas in a chemical attack on a school in Tehran, where he was living.
At least one other child, 11-year-old Fatemeh Razaei, has died in the attacks which began on November 30 and have taken place in hundreds of schools nationwide.
Close to 300 schools were targeted in the past Iranian year ending on March 20 without any apparent effort by the government to seriously pursue the perpetrators or explain to terrified parents and students what was happening in so many schools. Thousands of students have been affected, mostly girls, with hundreds more hospitalized with symptoms including respiratory distress, numbness in their limbs, heart palpitations, headaches, nausea, and vomiting.
Ordinary Iranians have been suspicious of the involvement of the regime itself, or religious extremists protected by the regime, calling the attacks “state terrorism,” although the regime has denied responsibility and even staged arrests of suspects after widespread protests. Popular belief is that such large-scale and coordinated attacks cannot happen without the green light of the regime’s authorities.
Rasool Nafisi, a professor of sociology of development at Strayer University in Virginia, told Iran International on Sunday that the hardliners of the regime are the ones who benefit from the spread of such attacks as an intimidation tactic. "The government intends to use chemical attacks in the future to quash the uprising of the people, especially women and girls," he added.
Referring to a burglary case in which the CCTV cameras captured the faces of the thieves, Mahmoud Sadeghi, a reformist politician and former lawmaker, said in a tweet on Sunday that "It’s more than two years that they (police) have taken the complete video of the theft from the apartment, in which the faces of the thieves can be clearly identified from several angles. They have not yet provided any information about the burglars or the lost property. Now they want to use smart equipment to file legal cases for people in the streets and alleys.”
