The police spokesperson said on Sunday that patrolling will start on the same day. If commands are not obeyed, the police can take “legal action”.
Iran’s morality police plan to resume patrols to ensure women obey dress codes and cover their hair in public.
The issue was reported by, for example, the British Broadcasting Company BBC and CNNwho base their information on Iran’s state media.
Police spokesperson Saeed Montazerolmahdi said on Sunday that the police will start patrolling in different parts of the country on the same day. According to him, the police first warns women who break the rules. If commands are not obeyed, the police can take “legal action”.
The so-called moral police largely disappeared from the streets of Tehran after the long protests last year. The protests began in September, when a 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini died under unclear circumstances after being arrested by the chastity police.
However, representatives of the hard religious line have been demanding the return of the moral police for some time, the BBC reports. According to Iranian law, women must cover their hair with a hijab and wear long, loose clothing.
According to the police spokesman, the tightening of discipline aims, for example, to “strengthen the family’s foundation” and respond to public demands, reports the financial newspaper Financial Times (FT). According to him, this is also answered by, for example, the president Ebrahim Raisin requirements.
Special punishments
On Sunday, there were no signs of the moral police on the streets of Tehran, the capital of Iran, the FT says. The police were not seen in the crowded places where they had previously patrolled – and women were also moving around without headscarves.
Many women stopped wearing the hijab after the protests, and based on videos on social media, women without headscarves became more common than before, the BBC estimates. On the other hand, the authorities tightened the penalties and, for example, closed shops if they did not obey the hijab laws.
The FT says that last week in Iran, unusual punishments were given to women who were considered to be violating moral laws. In the town of Varamini, a woman whose scarf had slipped on her shoulders while driving was sentenced to wash corpses for a month.
Actor Azadeh Samadi, who attended the funeral, was condemned over the weekend because he wore a hat instead of a scarf. He was sentenced to participate in psychological training because of his “social illness”.