Iran Threatens Women Who Unveil In Losing Battle Against Defiance
Since Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by hijab enforcers in September, sparking nationwide revolt, the simple act of unveiling in public has been a thorn in the side of the regime.
Since Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by hijab enforcers in September, sparking nationwide revolt, the simple act of unveiling in public has been a thorn in the side of the regime.
Despite numerous new measures to curb the trend, more women are daring to be seen without headscarves on streets, in public buildings, and on social media, shaking the foundations of the theocratic dictatorship to the core.
Life after the Mahsa Amini incident will never be the same. For many, the hijab has gone for good but the country’s hardliners will not relent in their battle.
In a determined statement on Thursday, the Islamic Republic’s Interior Ministry described the hijab as "one of the foundations of the civilization of the Iranian nation" and "one of the practical principles of the Islamic Republic.”
"There has not been and will not be any retreat or tolerance in religious principles and rules and traditional values, and hijab, as an unquestionable religious necessity, will always be one of the practical principles of the Islamic Republic of Iran," read the statement.
But, never have Iranians been forced to cover their hair throughout their millennia-old culture, and the Islamic Republic – along with Taliban Islamist extremist group in Afghanistan — is the only Muslim country with such a strict interpretation of hijab and nationwide coercive measures for its observance.
The unrest created since the death in morality police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini has made it increasingly difficult to enforce the mandatory Islamic dress code which has become a symbol of revolution.
The tide against the hijab was never as strong as it is today. Anti-hijab campaigns such as ‘White Wednesdays’, ‘Girls of Enghelab Street’, ‘No to Mandatory Hijab’, and ‘Sneaky Freedoms’, have been branded plots by “the enemy” to disrupt the idea in the minds of Iranian women.
The mere existence of so many campaigns against the obligatory dress code is indicative of its low popularity among the people.
In addition to the regime suggesting that the anti-hijab movement is "one of the axes of the enemies’ cognitive war against the nation”, the Interior Ministry has also called the “Women, Life, Liberty” -- the main motto of the current wave of anti-regime protests – a “demagogic slogan” devised by the intelligence agencies of adversaries to conceal their evil intentions.
The conspiratorial statement - typical of the regime rhetoric - claimed that the schemes of the movement have been foiled but the people but did not explain that if such is the case, why the Islamic Republic has been intensifying measures to enforce hijab. Workshops and seminars are being pushed on women to quash the female-led uprising against the regime’s hackneyed propaganda lines.
The ministry has also incited numerous clashes as it urged organizations as well as ordinary citizens to confront women who unveil in public, emboldening the hardliners to attack women and girls with loose-fitting hijab in public because they know the authorities will back them in courts if the rows lead to judicial cases.
Earlier in the week, it was announced that women could be fined as much as $60,000 for flouting hijab observance when a new law to enforce the Islamic dress code is passed by parliament.
These penalties will apply to passengers who do not abide by the hijab rules everywhere from in private vehicles to schools, restaurants and even in cyberspace. Nobody is above the law either, celebrity or otherwise, said lawmaker Hossein Jalali.
As surveillance intensifies, the regime also plans to use CCTV cameras and facial recognition technology to identify women who flout the hijab, and use cash fines and social restrictions to punish them including blocking their bank account and banning them from internet access or using governmental services.
Since the death of Mahsa Amini, the morality police may have had to step back from public life somewhat, but the swell of rebellion remains a bitter pill for the regime to swallow as they seek new means of oppression.
Four decades after the Islamic Republic forced women to wear headscarves, it is clear that change is afoot. Who knows what will be in the near future, but the tide has turned and no matter the levels of oppression and surveillance, there is no doubt there is no going back. The regime is fighting a losing battle and it has lost the hearts and minds of its people.
Women are prepared to sacrifice their lives to ensure the futures of the next generation and we are witnessing a resilience even the tools of dictatorship seem unable to quash.
Millions of Iranians circumnavigate internet restrictions imposed by the government by purchasing VPNs or downloading them from the internet on their phones and computers. Those that are for free often do not work, but quite often the paid VPNs also fail to work as the authorities continuously identify and block them. Such restrictions have hugely increased since anti-government protests that ensued after the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in ‘morality police’ custody in late September.
DATA.AI’s map application rankings and store data indicate that five of the top applications used by Iranians and downloaded from Google Play belong to the VPN category with the rest consisting of communications and social media applications including WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube all of which are blocked.
Google also said in October there was a spike in demand from Iran for its Jigsaw subsidiary's open-source Outline tool which allows third parties to set up secure VPNs resistant to disruption and censorship efforts.
Currently Google Play, where users could download VPNs, and occasionally Google Maps, Google Chat and Google Meet also become unavailable depending on the type of VPN one has installed on their devices.
“Only with a proxy [server] and with difficulty I can open my Telegram to download configurations that let me open Instagram and WhatsApp. I need another anti-filtering software for Twitter and heavy applications that have to be downloaded from Google Play which is also blocked,” a twitter user wrote Tuesday, and damned the Islamic Republic for making online access so difficult.
This viral video on Instagram shows a monkey hitting his phone angrily and swearing for not being able to connect to any of the “100s of VPNs” installed on the phone
"Daily demand for virtual private network (VPN) services in Iran is up over 3,000% compared to before the protests," Simon Migliano, the head of research at Top10VPN, told Axios in October.
Government restrictions were meant to stop people from sharing news and images of the protests that could motivate a larger segment of the population to join in. There are much fewer protests now, but the use of VPNs appears to have continued to grow as the government keeps its hold on the flow of information.
In January, the judiciary and the ministry of communications said they would take legal action against "unauthorized” providers of VPNs and internet circumvention tools.
By blocking access to applications such as WhatsApp and VPNs that make access to them possible, authorities are trying to force Iranians to use domestically-developed applications such as Soroush, Eitta, and Bale but many Iranians do not trust these applications which they say the government can control and use for spying on them.
Many VPNs are not safe, either. In January, Bitdefender, a private cybersecurity company, revealed information about an Iranian spyware that stole users’ sensitive information through a VPN software.
Extensive filtering has highly damaged internet-based businesses and around 10 million whose livelihoods depends on selling their products and services by advertising on social media. Small businesses, particularly those run from homes by women or small farms in rural areas whose numbers exponentially grew after the Covid pandemic, very heavily relied on Instagram for advertising and WhatsApp for communication with potential customers.
Officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have repeatedly criticized free access to the internet in recent years, and have been trying to prevent the free flow of information by expanding the National Information Network (NIN), a national intranet.
Payam Dorafshan told Emtedad News that these people filed a complaint after visiting a lawyer and presenting sufficient evidence.
According to attorney, Majid Khademi, Mir-Hesam Maleki, Reza Ezzati and Pouria Alipour are among the plaintiffs.
Explaining how these people were injured during the protests, Dorafshan said Majid Khademi had gone to the graveyard to offer condolences to the family of a victim, but "on his way back, he was shot from an unknown place and injured in one eye.”
Maleki went out to the street to move his car, but "he was shot in the face from a very close distance with a teargas launcher. Due to the severity of the injury, the bones of the upper and lower jaw and his teeth were completely crushed."
As Dorafshan stated, Maleki "has been undergoing various surgeries for months and has only been able to feed using a straw."
The Iranian lawyer also added that Reza Ezzati, who had gone to visit the grave of his relatives in a cemetery in Karaj west of Tehran, was "hit by many [bird]shots" on the way, and in addition to “eyes and face, even a few shots entered his body and heart.”
Ezzati "was forced to undergo heart surgery and currently one of his eyes has a severe vision defect while a large number of shots remain in his body."
Dorafshan has also asked other families of the deceased and injured to contact lawyers to file a lawsuit.
During the recent protests, ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022, hundreds of people lost their lives and many more received permanent injuries. The authorities of the Islamic Republic not only failed to accept any responsibility, but put pressure on some of the victims' families who made statements against regime officials during funerals or on social networks.
Activist twitter and Instagram account '1500 Tasvir,' dedicated to news about protests in Iran, has recently published a large batch of harrowing photos and videos of people shot or killed by the regime. The regime’s security forces have been extensively using cartridges of shotshell loaded with numerous small balls or birdshots, or medium-sized buckshots as well as single large solid projectiles known as a slug to quash the nationwide protests.
Late in November 2022, dozens of ophthalmologists issued a joint letter warning against the use of shotgun ‘birdshots’ and other projectiles by Iran’s security forces that have blinded over 500 protesters since mid-September. According to them, a large number of victims were taken to medical centers hit by rubber bullets and metal pellets as well as paintball bullets in their eyes, leading to loss of eyesight in one or both eyes.
The Islamic Republic, which had been previously condemned for blinding protesters in the streets, intensified the use of guns, including military weapons against unarmed protesters. However, young Iranians who lost one or both eyes say they do not regret having protested against the regime.
Vahid Beheshti has been battling the bitter winter outside the UK Foreign Office to raise awareness for the need to designate the Iranian terror group responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Iranian citizens since September.
He has got the attention of key political figures and has been joined by supporters hoping to force the UK government to take action on the brutal security forces.
On Monday, he met with the Minister of State for Security, Tom Tugendhat. Beheshti said, "He expressed his concerns for my health and emphasized that the Government's position is to proscribe the IRGC, but could not share the timescale in which this would happen."
His simple camp outside the Foreign Office has become a meeting place for activists, with others joining him.
His campaign has proven so successful that his name has been frequently mentioned during the sessions of the UK House of Commons. He has repeatedly urged UK lawmakers to hold official meetings with him instead of unofficial visits to his corner, to raise the profile of the issue to the highest echelons
Beheshti’s campaign is even reaching back home.
A boy in Iran holds a placard that urges Beheshti to break his hunger strike
As his body is getting weaker, temperatures at night dropping to freezing, his determination is growing stronger as he has vowed not to break the strike until the IRGC is listed as a terrorist organization.
The 46-year-old journalist is surviving on a daily diet of one cup of coffee, a few cubes of sugar, some salt and “plenty of water”.
“A policy of appeasement with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has not worked in the last 44 years, and it will never work going forward,” Beheshti said last week, calling on Sunak, for “strong leadership” and to stand by his pledge to designate the group before his recent election.
Before embarking on his hunger strike, Beheshti held several meetings with British lawmakers, pleading with them for the proscription, but no action was made.
The tipping point came in February when Iran International was forced to close its London studios after repeated death threats from the regime.“The main point I highlight to British politicians is that their country’s principles are under threat today... I cannot understand why the British police, with all their power, cannot protect journalists against IRGC threats,” Beheshti said.
The Revolutionary Guard is the Islamic Republic’s leading military, intelligence and internal security juggernaut, responsible for cracking down on dissent inside Iran and managing the proxy militias throughout the region including the Houthis in Yemen which have caused devastation to the country.
Beheshti has been actively raising the voice of Iranians among the international community with his numerous interviews, speeches and video messages to global events on the uprising in Iran.
He says the designation is the first practical step toward further isolation of the Islamic Republic and the final overthrow of the regime.
Rallies against the IRGC have taken place globally including just last week in Brussels. The UK’s current list of 78 proscribed terrorist organizations includes Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Several countries including the US, UK and EU have been cautious to designate the IRGC for fear it will further alienate the regime and in turn, limit negotiating capacity regarding its nuclear program.
In December, members of the UK House of Commons unanimously voted for a motion that urges the government to proscribe the IRGC but it has split the House.
Prominent Iranian opposition figures have repeatedly called on London to blacklist the Guards with exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi describing the move as to be akin to “pulling out the regime’s biggest tooth.”
Diaspora opposition groups and figures have held several gatherings and released various charters of solidarity and alliance in the past few months. Nearly unanimously, everyone says it is the Iranian people who should decide, through a referendum, the form of the future government in Iran.
The biggest diaspora alliance, the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom in Iran, which announced its existence in a February event at Georgetown University and issued its charter, the Mahsa Charter, in early March, advocates a secular-democratic system determined through a referendum but has not specified whether this could be a federal or a centralized government.
The alliance consists of the exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi, Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi and Canada-based activist Hamed Esmaeilion, as well as US-based author, journalist and women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad, actress and activist Nazanin Boniadi and Secretary General of the Kurdish Komala Party Abdullah Mohtadi.
The six members of the alliance stress that for the time-being they have agreed on “minimal positions” that could create the most consensus among the opposition and that it could be further improved.
Many who support the diaspora opposition have already made up their minds whether they want a republic or the return of the Pahlavi monarchy which was ousted by the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The true weight of those favoring one or the other tendency is not known.
Prince Reza Pahlavi has said that he will accept whatever form of government Iranians choose and at least on one occasion in the past has said that he personally favors a republic.
But some opposition supporters known as ‘constitutionalists’ are staunchly against establishing a republic of any form in Iran, particularly federalism, seek the revival of a constitutional monarchy and the Iranian Constitution of 1906.
Among the members of the alliance, Mohtadi has been the most vocal advocate of ethnicity-linguistic-based federalism. “I would personally like the charter to more clearly move towards [recognition of] federalism,” he told Iran International on the sidelines of an opposition conference in Toronto, Canada, Sunday. At least two other members, Alinejad and Esmaeilion, also appear to be advocates of decentralization of the government or some type of federalism.
“Any kind of ethnicity-based federalism will be a fascistic regress in Iran and [cause] violation of basic human rights. Ethnic groups are intertwined and drawing lines between Iranian ethnic groups on the imaginary ground that they are racially different will lead to years of civil war. We are one nation, the Iranian nation,” one of the opponents of ethnicity-linguistic based federalism tweeted Tuesday.
Those favoring federalism, however, say economic, ethnic and religious inequality in a multi-ethnic and multilingual country like Iran requires recognition of ethnic differences and decentralization of the government. Many among them also demand recognition of other languages such as Kurdish, Turki, Balochi and Arabic as official languages and the right of non-Persian speakers to education in their mother tongues instead of Persian (Farsi).
Yet others advocate a non-ethnicity-linguistic-based form of federalism to avoid problems such as disputes over geographical boundaries of federal states in mixed ethnicity-linguistic areas of the country.
Many provinces in Iran have mixed ethnic or linguistic populations, such as West Azarbaijan or the oil-rich Khuzestan. Trying to create ethnically homogeneous provinces or states peacefully, would be next to impossible.
“Yes to political and no to ethnicity defined federalism. Yes to American and no to Yugoslavian [types of federalism],” @Ted_Mosbi1361 who is among Persian-language Twitter opposition influencers tweeted Friday.