Two More Bookstores Closed In Tehran For Failing To Enforce Hijab
Amid crackdown on businesses and cultural establishments due to women not adhering to the mandatory hijab, two more bookstores in Tehran faced closure on Saturday.
Amid crackdown on businesses and cultural establishments due to women not adhering to the mandatory hijab, two more bookstores in Tehran faced closure on Saturday.
Ketab-e Dey and Ketab-e Khaneh announced on their Instagram page that they would be closed "until further notice." When questioned by users about the reason for the closure, the management confirmed, "We were sealed [shut down by the regime]”.
While the store managers refrained from providing detailed explanations, reports suggest the shutdown of the bookstores is part of an ongoing effort to enforce hijab rules in Tehran and other Iranian cities.
Meanwhile, the Qom Prosecutor's Office reported the closure of a cinema in the religious city, alleging "indecent advertising related to the screening of a foreign film." They claimed that the film's horror genre and introduction of supernatural elements were somehow linked to "Satanism."
While the protest movement in Iran over the past year, sparked by the tragic death of Mahsa Amini while in custody, didn't lead to the overthrow of the regime, it did manage to significantly challenge one of its core principles, mandatory hijab.
As women increasingly defy the mandatory headscarf and venture out, the regime intensifies its efforts to suppress social activities, punishing the population as it faces challenges in enforcing hijab rules amid growing public resistance.
In recent months, numerous shops, restaurants, cafes and malls where Iranian women continue to disregard the regime's mandatory hijab have been shut down across Iran, with many women arrested in the process.
This month, new laws were passed to introduce even harsher punishments for failure to comply with hijab laws.
Meanwhile, a group of protesters in Zahedan took to the streets, blocking roads by lighting fires, as seen in videos published by Halvash, a platform reporting events in Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan Province.
Bloody Friday, which unfolded in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan, on September 30 last year, witnessed the loss of nearly 100 lives among protesters, with dozens more sustaining injuries.
The incident being the bloodiest event during anti-regime protests during the past year has gone unpunished, as the violence by security forces was not investigated and no officers were held accountable.
On Friday, residents in Zahedan and other cities in the region held protests and scores were wounded by government gunfire. A Baluch Telegram channel announced that Saturday shopkeepers in both Zahedan and Chabahar embarked on a widespread strike in response to the calls for action.
Additionally, other cities in the predominantly Sunni province, such as Nowbandegan, joined the strike. There have also been reports of the Islamic Republic's security forces attempting to quell potential protest gatherings by besieging Zahedan's market.
Internet access in some cities within the province also experienced disruptions on Saturday as the government usually tries to prevent news of unrest spreading to other cities.
On September 29, residents of Zahedan, Suran, Khash, Rask, and Tafatan and some other cities took to the streets, marching and expressing their opposition to the Islamic Republic with slogans. The agents of the regime fired shots at the protesters in Zahedan.
Halvash reported that at least 29 people, including eight children, were injured by rubber bullets. The source further disclosed that the number of detainees reached at least 51 individuals.
The tragic events of Bloody Friday were initially sparked by a gathering of protesting worshippers after a police commander had sexually assaulted a 15-year-old Baluch girl a few weeks earlier. Moreover, anti-regime protests in the rest of the country were in full swing by then, which encouraged the Balush minority to vent its anger. In response, military personnel and agents of the Islamic Republic resorted to live ammunition against the demonstrators and other innocent citizens in and around Zahedan's main mosque.
According to the latest updates from Halvash, the brutal attack resulted in the deaths of at least 105 civilians, including 17 children and teenagers, leaving numerous others with spinal cord injuries, blindness, mutilations, and limb impairments.
Meanwhile, the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights Organization has urged the international community to refer the incidents of Bloody Friday to international judicial bodies for investigation as crimes against humanity. Its director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, emphasized, “Killing more than a hundred unarmed men, women and children is a clear example of crimes against humanity and Ali Khamenei and the forces under his command must be held accountable.”
“Despite enduring one of the bloodiest crimes of the last 30 years, the Islamic Republic couldn’t break the resistance of Baluch people to achieve their fundamental rights. And Zahedan’s weekly protests in the last year is proof of that,” he added.
Firebrand Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami, a member of the presidium of the Assembly of Experts, made this assertion during the assembly's annual meeting. However, the Constitution's Article 111 clearly grants the Assembly of Experts the authority to supervise and even remove the Supreme Leader if he is deemed "incapable of fulfilling his responsibilities as leader." Observers have called Khatami's statement unprecedented and against the Constitution.
Meanwhile, a video clip from the 1980s showed Assembly of Experts Chairman Ahmad Jannati advocating for limiting Khamenei's powers and supervising his behavior and performance. Jannati argued that such limitations were necessary to prevent chaos and distrust among the nation. Khatami, on the other hand, claimed that the law only required Assembly members to ensure that the Supreme Leader remained consistently capable of leading the nation.
There have been disputes over the past 30 years about what exactly the Constitutional Law says about the Assembly's role, but Khatami's unprecedented attempt to do away with the AoE's supervisory role, was an elaborate act to please Khamenei.
Obviously, no one at the Assembly meeting was brave enough to tell Khatami that he was wrong, and the leader's performance needed to be supervised by the Assembly. However, the institution has been so weakened by Khamenei during the past decades that instead of controlling Khamenei, its members have been turned into Khamenei's inferior employees whose only function is to praise him twice a year during their rare meetings while most of its elderly members are seen dozing off.
Khatami claimed that some of the AoE members wish to find faults in Khamenei's performance. This was perceived as another way of intimidating other members.
A scholarly article in the Koranic Studies Journal stated in 2012 that although the word supervision has not been used in article 111 of the constitution, what the article calls for cannot be done by any means other than supervising the leader's performance and behavior.
Iranian analyst Mehdi Mahdavi Azad recalled in an interview with Iran International that while the Assembly initially was debating limiting Khamenei’s powers, Khamenei himself was in favor of the limitations. At that time in 1989, Khamenei at times aligned with reformist politicians either genuinely, or to garner their support. Mahdavi Azad said that Ahmad Khatami probably was backed by other radicals at the Assembly of Experts on Wednesday. However, Khamenei said once again during a meeting with students in 2000 that he was in favor of Assembly of Experts' supervision of his performance.
Since late 2000s, however, Khamenei gradually changed from a hardline cleric to a dictator who treated even his close friends such as former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ruthlessly.
Another Iranian analyst, Morteza Kazemian told Iran International that “The six clerics appointed by Khamenei to the Guardian council were handpick radicals. During the past way, Khamenei has changed the Assembly's combination to serve his own interests."
Kazemian quoted Ahmad Khatami as having said after an AoE meeting with Khamenei in 2006 that he was against the Assembly’s supervision of his performance although according to Khatami, a majority of the Assembly's member believed there should be checks and balances on Khamenei and his financial conglomerate which holds a large part of the country's assets.
