Country: Iran
Pro-Government Vigilantes Are Attacking Women For Protesting Forced Hijab (media)
ICHR strongly calls on Iranian authorities to stop their violent unjust inhuman system towards women’s rights defenders peacefully protesting against forced hijab laws. In the past year, Iran’s authorities have stepped up their crackdown on women’s rights defenders, the most shocking example is the case of prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was just recently sentenced to 33 years in prison and 148 lashes for her opposition to forced hijab laws.
After seeing series of videos all over the social media in the past few weeks, it has certainly shed more light on the daily harassment and violent attacks that the Iranian woman whom are opposing the forced hijab are receiving from the morality police and the pro-government vigilantes who are seeking to enforce the country’s forced hijab (veiling) laws, said Ardeshir Zarezadeh, Advocacy Director for Iran, and The Middle East at ICHR Canada.
These videos show violent behaviour from members of the public or plain-clothes morality police aggressively confronting or attacking women for defying Iran’s degrading forced hijab laws.
The most recently footages that has emerged captured a very shocking levels of abuse that the Iranian women are facing on a daily basis from morality police or pro-government thugs simply for fiercely defying the country’s abusive forced hijab laws,” said Ardeshir Zarezadeh, Advocacy Director for Iran, and The Middle East at ICHR Canada.
The Iranian women whom are opposing the forced hejib are being stopped in the streets on daily bases and abused violently, threatened, as well as degraded verbally while forcing them to to pull their headscarves forward to hide strands of hair or give them tissues to wipe off their make-up. It doesn’t end there they also get physically assaulted, slapped in the face, beaten by batons.
The Iranian women’s rights defenders have bravely filmed these violets occurrences which aims to raise awareness of the harassment and assault that these women and girls are facing in the streets of Iran as a result of forced hijab laws.
Millions of Iranian women are being denied the right to be treated with dignity and to go about their daily lives without fearing violence or harassment.
Under Iranian law, women and girls as young as nine years old who are seen in public without a headscarf can be punished with a prison sentence of between 10 days and two months, or a cash fine.
ICHR stands against Iran’s forced hijab laws. As they are not only deeply degrading and discriminatory, they are also being used to justify violent assaults on women and girls in the streets.