GENEVA: The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has urged Iran to decriminalise mandatory veiling laws, warning that the harassment of women, including what they do or don’t wear, appears to have intensified as street protests have died down.
According to Voice of America, UN official Volker Türk told reporters in Geneva that “Girls and women face increasingly stringent social, legal, and economic measures in the authorities’ enforcement of discriminatory compulsory veiling laws,” and “I urge the government to heed Iranians’ calls for reform and to begin by repealing regulations that criminalise non-compliance with mandatory dress codes.
In the past some days, state officials presented a bill to Parliament that would result in additional punitive and restrictive measures on girls and women who fail to comply with the country’s compulsory veiling laws, including financial fines and social exclusions.
The bill stated that if citizens and institutes fail to comply with veiling laws, they would first be warned and fined, or their establishment would be shut down, and if they continue, a judicial case would be filed.
The rules extend to celebrities and famous citizens who do not abide by the compulsory hijab laws: “Whenever persons who — due to social, cultural, political, artistic or sports activities have a reputation and social influence — commit the crime of unveiling, their punishment would be increased by one degree depending on the case, and they would be sentenced to deprivation of professional activity for the period of 3 months to one year.”
The proposed bill was sent to Parliament and, if approved, would be sent to the Guardian Council, a secret 12-member council of jurists and clerics empowered to overturn legislation and approve and refuse candidates for public office for final approval.
Turk said, “The onus is on the State to introduce laws and policies to protect the human rights of girls and women and including their right to involving in public life without fear of retribution and discrimination.”
Several women in Iran have publicly opposed the mandatory hijab since the death last September of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died while in the custody morality police of Iran.
Amini had been detained for allegedly violating the hijab, and her death sparked the country’s protests.
The previous month, Iran launched a new domestic surveillance program for enforcing its mandatory hijab law.
