Here’s the moment an unidentified member of Iran’s morality Police tried to drag a woman off a train for not wearing a headcarf.
On a bus ride in Iran, a woman is seen with her hair up and being targeted by an older lady in full headdresses and abaya.
The older woman is seen pushing the younger lady off the bus and saying she must be turned over to the police because of her violation of the strict dress code.
Other women intervene and say to her that she should ‘get lost’, ‘give up’, before she’s forced onto the street.
The moment an undercover officer of morality (left) encountered a woman (left) who wasn’t wearing a headscarf on Iran’s public buses was captured in video
Other passengers forced the woman to get off the bus and told her that she was not responsible for the clothing of another woman.
The exact time and location of the Iranian footage are not known. However, Masih Alijad, an Iranian feminist rights advocate currently based in the US shared it on Twitter.
She said, “Today, a mole police attacked a woman on a bus and wanted her to be arrested because her hair wasn’t covered.” She was stopped by other women.
This is the daily struggle of Iranian women. The Islamic Republic employed 7000 cover-morality officers in Tehran last year.
Iran is like other Middle Eastern countries that enforces rules on women’s clothing in public, with a strong emphasis on modesty.
Iran has strict rules for women.
The laws derive from comments made by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini following the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
In the days after the Shah’s overthrow, the Ayatollah stated that the women who participated in revolution were modest-clothed women.
“Coquettish ladies, who wear make-up and display their necks and hair in the streets,” he stated.
Iran forces women to cover their heads, arms and legs and bans clothing deemed too close-fitting or colourful based on edicts given by Ayatollah Khomeini after the 1979 revolution
The video shows a group women confronting the officer of morality in front of her, before she is forced to leave the bus.
They have done nothing wrongeous. They are not able to contribute to society in any way, politically, or vocationally. This is why they are so annoying and distracting people.
Those remarks translated into a series of edicts written into law about the way women should dress, which are enforced via the country’s morality police – Gasht-e Ershad or ‘Guidance Patrols’.
Recent years have seen the relaxed rules about what women are permitted to wear and where they can go, thanks to Hassan Rouhani’s moderate leadership.
In 2019, women could attend the first ever men’s soccer match – although they were in separate stands.
It seems that rules are more tightly enforced after Rouhani’s defeat earlier in the year, and Ebrahim Raisi being elected.
Rights campaigners said that Raisi was elected to power to signal to Iran’s rulers that opposition would not be tolerated.