Iran is once again deploying police officers on the streets to enforce its conservative dress code for women, which many have flouted since the protest movement that rattled the country began last fall, according to state news media and social media posts.
Months into the protests, Iran quietly withdrew the morality police from the streets in an apparent concession to try to calm the nationwide upheaval against the government. The protests began last September after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, died in custody after the morality police accused her of violating the dress code and arrested her on a Tehran street.
A spokesman for Iran’s police force, Gen. Saeed Montazer al-Mahdi, said on Sunday that effective immediately, police officers would begin patrolling to “deal with those who, unfortunately, regardless of the consequences of dressing outside the norm, still insist on breaking the norm.” He added that the patrols would “expand public security and strengthen the foundation of the family.”
He said the police would first warn people caught breaking the hijab law governing dress, which requires women to cover their hair and wear long, loose clothing that hides the shape of their bodies. Those who still refuse to comply, he said, will be prosecuted.
It was unclear whether the authorities were again deploying the morality police — a force that an official said in December had been dismantled — or were requiring the regular police to do what the morality police had once done.
The mass antigovernment demonstrations focused at first on the mandatory hijab law, then expanded to encompass a variety of grievances, including other social restrictions, corruption, soaring inflation, a perpetually limping economy and political repression. The movement morphed into the biggest challenge in decades to Iran’s entire system of authoritarian clerical rule.
Women tore off their head scarves and burned them, dancing in front of the flames. Many refused to put them back on even after the protests dissipated amid a violent government crackdown, in which thousands of protesters were arrested, hundreds killed and at least seven executed. University students chanted, “To hell with morality police!”
For months, the government largely looked the other way as bare heads proliferated across Iranian cities, hemlines got shorter and more Western-style clothing appeared in the streets.