Iran: thirty women arrested for having removed their veils in public

AFP

AFP

Friday, 2 February 2018 04:00

UPDATE
Friday, 2 February 2018 04:00

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Iranian police have arrested around thirty women in Tehran for having removed their veils in public to protest against its mandatory since the 1979 islamic revolution, reported Thursday night several local media outlets.

“Police arrested 29 people who were disrupting the social order and has handed over to justice,” says the press release of the police of Tehran, published by the agencies (Fars, Ilna, and Tasnim, without giving more details.

These days, social networks have published photographs apparently taken in Tehran but also in other cities of women head naked in the street, their veils hanging from the end of a pole as a sign of challenge.

The law in force in Iran since the 1979 islamic Revolution requires women to get out head veiled, and the body covered with a loose-fitting garment is more or less long.

The zeal of the vice squad to enforce this law has markedly decreased in recent years and a growing number of Téhéranaises but also women from other major cities of the country are taking liberties by leaving much of their hair.

These actions of protest against the mandatory wearing of the veil have followed the example of an Iranian arrested at the end of December after rising a bare head on a cabinet in a busy thoroughfare of Tehran, wearing his veil at the end of a pole.

The young woman was released after about a month of detention, according to lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, a figure of the activism in favour of Human rights in Iran.

I Sotoudeh had said Tuesday AFP that the justice had set to approximately 90 000 euros the deposit for the release of another opposition stopped this week, believing that it showed the “intent” of the authorities of the detention.

The questioning of the obligation of the wearing of the veil by some women in Iran is “childish”, said Wednesday the prosecutor general of the islamic Republic, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, by minimizing the importance of this challenge.

“It is a matter as insignificant that is nothing of concern,” he said, adding that the protesters solitary had “acted in ignorance” and that “they could have been influenced from abroad”.