TEHRAN, Iran – Iran has scrapped its morality police after greater than two months of protests triggered by the arrest of Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating the nation’s strict feminine gown code, native media stated Sunday.
Women-led protests, labelled “riots” by the authorities, have swept Iran for the reason that 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin died on September 16, three days after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran.
“Morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary” and have been abolished, Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was quoted as saying by the ISNA news company.
His remark got here at a non secular convention the place he responded to a participant who requested “why the morality police were being shut down”, the report stated.
The morality police — recognized formally because the Gasht-e Ershad or “Guidance Patrol” — have been established underneath hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to “spread the culture of modesty and hijab”, the necessary feminine head overlaying.
The models started patrols in 2006.
The announcement of their abolition got here a day after Montazeri stated that “both parliament and the judiciary are working (on the issue)” of whether or not the regulation requiring ladies to cowl their heads must be modified.
President Ebrahim Raisi stated in televised feedback Saturday that Iran’s republican and Islamic foundations have been constitutionally entrenched “but there are methods of implementing the constitution that can be flexible”.
The hijab turned necessary 4 years after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy and established the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Morality law enforcement officials initially issued warnings earlier than beginning to crack down and arrest ladies 15 years in the past.
The vice squads have been normally made up of males in inexperienced uniforms and girls clad in black chadors, clothes that cowl their heads and higher our bodies.
The position of the models advanced, however has at all times been controversial even amongst candidates working for the presidency.
Clothing norms regularly modified, particularly underneath former reasonable president Hassan Rouhani, when it turned commonplace to see ladies in tight denims with free, colourful headscarves.
But in July this yr his successor, the ultra-conservative Raisi, known as for the mobilization of “all state institutions to enforce the headscarf law”.
Raisi on the time charged that “the enemies of Iran and Islam have targeted the cultural and religious values of society by spreading corruption”.
In spite of this, many ladies continued to bend the principles, letting their headscarves slip onto their shoulders or sporting tight-fitting pants, particularly in main cities and cities.
Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia additionally employed morality police to implement feminine gown codes and different guidelines of habits. Since 2016 the power there was sidelined in a push by the Sunni Muslim kingdom to shake off its austere picture. — Agence France-Presse
