Iran International
Iran's Cyber-Police (FATA) has threatened women fashion businesses, surgery clinics and gyms with closure over unveiled photos in their social media content.
Ramin Pashaei, deputy chief of FATA, said Monday Cyber Police aims at “clearing the [Persian language] cyberspace of immoral content” and warned that any social media content considered “outside norms and against moral standards” would bring about prosecution.
Authorities accuse boutiques, beauty salons, modelling agencies, gyms and plastic surgery establishments of encouraging women not to wear the hijab by their “immoral” content. FATA on some occasions in the past has prosecuted them or forced them to shut down their accounts.
Last week an official of the “Basij-Militia of Retailers”, Gholamreza Hasanpour, told the semi-official Mehr News Agency that female sales staff should wear uniforms to work but have been given a “choice” of one hundred different designs to choose from.
Unveiled girl protesting against compulsory hijab by performing gymnastics on the streets of Boukan in western Iran.
Women’s defiance of hijab rules has a history as long as the Islamic Republic itself, but it has escalated to new levels since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini in custody of morality police for “improper hijab” sparked nationwide protests.
Protests gradually subsided after several months but defiance of hijab rules as a form of civil disobedience has forced the government to try to stop the anti-compulsory hijab movement by taking various measures.
Such measures include preventing defiant women from using public transportation, entering government offices and boarding planes, shutting down shops and shopping malls as well as various plans to “encourage and convince” them to wear the hijab such as billboards and banners extolling “hijab and chastity”.
One such banner put up by the ministry of Islamic Guidance and Tehran International Bookfair last week quoted the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy as saying that corruption, sexual derangement, and lack of hijab caused profusion of divorces in Europe. Another banner they have put up quoted 19th century French author Victor Hugo praising modesty of women and its allure for men.
“It's hilarious when you have to fake quotes from Tolstoy and Hugo about hijab because half of your own population is ignoring you,” London-based journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh tweeted.
Pressure on activists and prosecution of celebrity artists for defiance of hijab in public and through social media are among the other measures the regime has been employing to scare women into wearing the hijab.
Sepideh Rashno, a 28-year-old art student whose defiance of hijab rules and heated dispute with a hijab enforcer on a city bus landed her in prison in July last year, a few months before the Mahsa protests, was suspended from Alzahra University in Tehran due to "non-observance of the Islamic hijab" last week for two semesters.
"As a citizen, I have the right to choose the clothes I wear,” she wrote in response to the decision, adding that she planned to return to the university after her suspension “in my preferred outfit”, that is, unveiled.
Pundits have said the regime’s determination to reinforce strict hijab rules is political in nature. Vice President in Legal Affairs Mohammad Dehghan on Sunday confirmed such theories. “The Islamic Republic will not mean much if there is no hijab in the country,” he said.
On April 4 at a meeting with state officials Tuesday, Khamenei claimed that foreign intelligence services were encouraging Iranian women to disobey mandatory hijab.
“Discarding hijab is haram based on Sharia and also politically,” he declared. His declaration was a clear signal to authorities that they need to do anything it takes to re-establish control over women which has somehow waned following anti-regime protests.
“The order given by his excellency is clear,” Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf said a day after Khamenei’s speech while promising to give precedence to any hijab-related motion or bill.
However, the head of Medical Council, Mohammad Rais-Zadeh, said Sunday that no hijab-related case has been sent to the council so far.
The ruling follows reports of a doctor refusing to accept a veiled patient in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
In February, a medical office in the northeastern Iranian city of Kashmar was shut when a doctor there objected to a woman harassing a patient over her “improper clothing”.
Earlier in February, Iran’s Health Minister Bahram Einollahi said violation of hijab regulations is considered a crime at hospitals and if they do not abide by hijab regulations, they will not receive approval to operate. He added that public hospitals have been required to comply with the hijab law and provide services to women by female staff.
“Women's ultrasound should be performed by women, and in some cases that we do not have enough radiologists, we ask female general practitioners and gynecologists to be given short-term training,” underlined the minister.
The clerical regime continues to strictly enforce the "mandatory hijab", despite the mass protests that followed the death in custody last September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by the morality police for defying modesty rules.
About a month before the death of Mahsa Amini, the so-called morality police had started patrolling medical and academic centers in Iran’s northeastern city of Mashhad to enforce compliance with the Islamic dress code. Social media users earlier reported the presence of teams from what the Islamic Republic calls the ‘Enjoining right and forbidding vice headquarters’ in various wards of hospitals and medical centers in other cities, with some reports of pressures on hospitals to separate male and female patients admitted to the ICU.
The uprising has made it increasingly difficult for the clerical regime to enforce the mandatory Islamic dress code. Appearing in public without a full veil has become a common sight even in small and more conservative towns. Since the beginning of the ‘Women, Life, Liberty’ movement in September last year, thousands of girls and women have set fire to their headscarves in a symbolic move and voiced opposition to compulsory hijab.
Rais-Zadeh also voiced his concern over the low income of doctors and surgeons, saying current wages mean no one would study for many years to qualify.
Iran’s medical profession is facing a crisis as more and more doctors leave the country for better wages and working conditions.
Driven by economic and professional problems, as well as lack of social and political freedoms, an increasing number of Iran's healthcare professionals emigrate.
There are no transparent data on the emigration of healthcare and other professionals, but medical officials and lawmakers often offer fragmentary information on the scope of the problem. The number of doctors emigrating has more than doubled in the past decade, according to one report.
Thousands of physicians, dentists, midwives, and nurses have either emigrated in the past few years or are planning to leave for other countries. Many in Iran, including lawmakers, have repeatedly warned that the ever-increasing desire of healthcare professionals to leave will result in the deterioration of the country’s healthcare system.
In February, Mohammad Sharifi-Moghadam, a member of the central council of Iran's Nurses’ Organization, said between 2,500 to 3,000 nurses were emigrating from Iran each year, based on the number of requests for good standing certificates, confirming that the applicant is entitled to practice medicine in the country.
The average salary for a doctor in Iran is about $400 per month, against ten as much or more in the US and UK. Physicians and other health professionals’ maximum fees as well as private hospitals’ tariffs are set and announced by the government annually.
Mohammad-Ali Mohseni-Bandpey, a member of the parliament health committee, said last year that wrong government policies affecting doctors included ignoring their needs and demands and refusing to allow them to raise their fees despite higher costs of living and running their practices. According to Mohseni-Bandpey, despite an almost 50 percent annual inflation rate, the government is trying to prevent a similar increase in doctors’ fees, to keep healthcare costs down. He suggested that the government should allow them to increase their fees but shift the burden to insurance companies rather than patients.
Doctors in Iran must also contend with a lack of adequate medical equipment and resources.
With fewer doctors available to provide care, the quality of medical care in Iran is declining, especially in rural areas, where access is already limited.
Moreover, medical schools are struggling to attract and retain students, leaving the future of the medical profession in Iran in doubt.
A major investment in the healthcare system, as well as increased funding for medical schools and hospitals is required to salvage the situation and stop the flood of emigrating doctors. However, Iran’s dire financial plight means such investment is impossible for the foreseeable future.
Protestors gathered overnight outside the prison in Esfahan (Isfahan) where Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashmi, and Saeed Yaqoubi await their death sentence, having been found guilty in a trial condemned as a travesty of justice by human rights campaigners.
They were convicted over the death of two IRGC’s Basij militia members and a police officer in protests of November last year, in what Persian media have dubbed the ‘Isfahan House’ case.
Responding to social media calls on Sunday night, people gathered outside Esfahan (Isfahan) Central Prison hoping to stop the executions. Videos posted by activists show dozens chanting slogans in front of the prison, while gunfire was also heard as thick smoke caused by teargas enveloped the area.
Following the increase in the executions of prisoners in recent weeks, families of those sentenced to death held a protest rally outside the Judiciary’s office in Tehran’s Keshavarz Street on Monday, demanding an end to the killing.
A similar rally was held last week outside Iran’s largest prison in Karaj hoping for mercy by the regime but by sunrise the prisoners were hanged.
Opposition activists say the death penalty is being used against the Isfahan House three as an intimidation tactic to stop further protests.
Campaigners say the prisoners were tortured into confessions, and there is no reliable evidence against them. According to an audio file released on Sunday of Kazemi talking to his cousin, he was coerced into confession by threats to his family of rape and death.
Exiled prince Reza Pahlavi tweeted on Sunday night, saying, “We must not allow this murderous regime to take another innocent life and turn another mother into a mourner.”
Prominent activist Masih Alinejad said: “We should not allow the regime of crime and madness to take more young people from us and make more families grieving.”
Canada-based dissident figure Hamed Esmaeilion, whose daughter and wife were killed in the shooting down of Flight PS752 by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in 2020, tweeted, “When will the insanity stop? When will the free world stand behind its own values? How many more executions will it take for the world to stand up?”
Last week, Australian Senator Jordon Steele-John, a political sponsor of Majid Kazemi called on the Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong “to have an urgent meeting with her Iranian counterpart to do all they can to prevent the execution of Majid, which could happen at any moment”.
Iranian expatriate communities plan demonstrations against the executions in cities worldwide on Saturday, May 20.
Iran has always had a high number of executions but the number started to rise after President Ebrahim Raisi – the former head of the country’s notorious judiciary -- took office in August 2021.
The United Nations said last week that Iran has executed 209 people so far this year, calling the record "abominable".