Iran, doubts about the abolition of the moral police: “There is no confirmation”
Chaos reigns in Iran: while protests against the regime continue, with demonstrators calling three days of strikes starting today, Monday 5 December, doubts remain over the announcement by the country’s attorney general, Mohamad Jafar Montazeri regarding to the abolition of the moral police, which has the task of verifying the strict dress codes imposed on women.
“The moral police has nothing to do with the judiciary. It was abolished by the same people who instituted it” declared the Attorney General, but the point, as underlined by Montazeri himself, is that the moral police does not depend on the judiciary, but on the Ministry of the Interior, from which no official communication in this regard.
The same Arab media, Al Jazeera first of all, they held back on the prosecutor’s statements. “No official of the Islamic Republic has said that the morality police have been closed”, specified the Iranian state TV in Arabic Al-Alamcited by Cnn.
“There has been no official announcement of a formal abolition or disbandment of the morality police, but an acknowledgment by a senior judicial official that its activities have been suspended/stopped. The management of the patrols has been the responsibility of the Police and the Ministry of the Interior for years” clarified the Bloomberg journalist Golnar Motevalli instead.
Secretary of State Blinken also commented on the news with great skepticism: “It depends on the Iranian people. It’s about them, not us. What we saw after the killing of Mahsa Amini was the extraordinary courage of young Iranians, especially women, who stand up for the right to say what they want, and wear what they want. If the regime has now responded in any way, that could be a good thing. But we need to see how it actually plays out in practice and what the Iranian people think about it.”
“If it is confirmed, it can be seen as an act of good will. But it is only a small step that does not change the situation of repression which remains unacceptable” was the comment of Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.
What is the moral police
Created in 2005 by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution under the ultra-conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the moral police has the task of “disseminating the culture of decency and the hijab”.
The morality police must verify the strict dress codes imposed on women, ie the use of the veil to cover the head, but also the prohibition of wearing tight-fitting trousers and skirts. Violators of the code risk arrest.
During the presidency of Hassan Rohani, the moral police had been set aside, but the “Gasht-e Ershad”, this is the name of the Iranian police force, has returned to act harshly after the rise to power of the ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisi .
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