Women To Be Fined Up To $60,000 For Hijab: Iran Lawmaker

Brothers Reza and Abdulrauf Rakhshani, prominent teachers at a Sunni religious school in Zahedan, went missing after what is believed to have been a regime backed forced disappearance.

According to reports from local publication Halvash, the two brothers were arrested by the security forces in Zahedan on February 15 and despite the follow-up of their family, the judicial and security authorities have not yet commented on their condition.

The report claims that the arrest of the two brothers is aimed at "putting more pressure on Mowlavi Abdolhamid, the Sunni Imam of Makki Mosque of Zahedan”.

Civil activists in Sistan and Baluchistan, home to a Baluch majority, have previously reported that during the protests of the last six months a large number of citizens, including children under the age of 18, have been arrested with no charge against them.

There is no accurate information about the situation of many of them due to the disruption of the internet in many areas of the southeastern province.

At least 69 Afghan students who were studying at a religious school in Zahedan, were arrested by the security forces and transferred to a camp on February 13 after having been forced to confess to participating in Zahedan’s weekly protests.

The Sunni city of Zahedan in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province has been witnessing protests against repressions and discriminations in the province following mass Friday prayers during the past 25 weeks.

The Sunni Baluch population have taken to the streets in Zahedan every Friday after prayers since September 30 when government forces cracked down on protesters and killed tens of protesters, known as Bloody Friday. Protests began after the death of Mahsa Amini in ‘hijab police’ custody in mid-September.

Le Monde reported on Monday that the lawyers, led by Chirinne Ardakani, hope to bring to trial those responsible for crimes committed against Iranian protesters.

For the past six months, the 31-year-old Franco-Iranian Ardakani has been actively participating in the uprising of the Iranian people for their freedom, the idea of forming the group becoming apparent after the murder of Mahsa Amini at the hands of morality police.

Known as the Collectif Iran Justice, a "legal task force" consisting of around 15 lawyers, jurists, and translators, the group is preparing to file a complaint with the Paris prosecutor's office against Hossein Salami.

The head of the Revolutionary Guards and author of death threats against the pro-democracy diaspora, which the legal team claims amounts to an unofficial fatwa, should not go unpunished.

Ardakani has so far managed to win the backing of 100 members of parliament in France to support the protesters who have been sentenced to death in Iran.

At the end of March, she is going to give a speech at the United Nations Human Rights Council about the suppression of protesters by the Islamic Republic.

In an interview with the reformist daily Shargh, sociologist Maghsud Farasatkhah said that the government needs to find answers to a set of urgent national problems including water shortage, capital flight, emigration of human resources, increase in poverty, diminishing economic stability, gender, ethnic and social inequality, and so on.

"But currently, the government has reduced politics to the unilateral omission of 'others' to reinforce its political power," he said, adding that ignoring the need for dialogue has led all politics into an impasse.

Farasatkhah added that a ruling class should come to power by trying to satisfy the aspirations of the people, but this is ignored in Iran, as all decisions are made by an elite whose relations with the rest of the society can be defined as "patriarchal."

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By the word "elite," Farasatkhah means a group of non-elected politicians loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, or those who have been elected to positions through a system of biased candidate vetting that merely serves the leader's interests.

According to Farasatkhah, this elite operates via non-transparent and non-accountable institutions in which there are no checks and balances. This will inevitably bring about a conflict between rulers and society. Examples of this are disagreements between the government and the people, such as compulsory hijab. What is prohibited by the government is permissible in the eyes of the nation. The same duality and conflict also exist in many other areas such as the unrestricted access to the Internet, sports, art, education, and so on.

The unrepresentative elite tries to force its views on the people and deny them personal and political freedoms.

In such a situation, when the people are not allowed to take part in politics, they turn into masses, and masses sometimes act as populist politicians and propagandists want them to act. Farasatkhah said that the society currently acts like a mass which is easily overwhelmed by events in Iran and the world. Any incident can potentially upturn the situation, and this is a cause for concern. "I am worried about the future and stability of the society as eventually the people will be the losers in the chain of events.

Farasatkhah said that the way out of this situation is turn the masses back into a society in which vocational, civil, local, and public institutions could be activated to empower the society, make it rational and rob the populists of their leverage.

However, many dissidents and critics might label Farasatkha’s recommendations as wishful thinking within the ideology and structure of the current regime. Nice ideas have been around in Iran for decades, but the regime has prevented all reforms.

In another interview in the same issue of Shargh, Expediency Council member and a long-time regime insider, Majid Ansari said he can see signs that a part of the government has noticed the threats and understood the need for a review of current policies. Ansari is concerned about the threats but is willing to offer his way out of the problem.

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Ansari, an aide to the de facto leader of ‘reformists’ in Iran, former President Mohammad Khatami, said that current protests has put regime politicians and political groups in all factions to test. He acknowledged the people's disillusionment about the factions but still believes that there are still ways to restore people's trust in political groups and even the government.

Iranian protesters have been saying that there is no big difference between the hardliner and reformist factions of the regime and they do not believe in that dichotomy any longer. Regime change, they say, is the only way to resolve the many crises Iran faces.

Ansari also acknowledged that the all-conservative government in Iran has led to "a relative political impasse," but he believes that admitting the mistakes made during the past years and using collective wisdom to make things right will put the nation back on the right track.

However, he did not say why Iran was not able to get on the right track in 44 years since the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

Ansari's solution is mainly based on holding free and fair elections, but doing so requires changes to the constitution or the combination of institutions linked to Khamenei, including the Guardian Council, and it is not clear who can bring Khamenei to terms with the idea of change as in his latest speech on March 21, he ruled out any change in the constitution and attributed the idea of change to "the enemies."

The issue remains a key flashpoint between the revolutionary tide and the regime’s leading clerics.

Mohsen Araki, a member of the Assembly of Experts said on Sunday that the Islamic Republic "will not allow improper hijab to spread in the Islamic society”, calling it a “new Covid” which ruins the society.

He said that in spite of a mass movement fighting against the mandatory Islamic head covering, “the prevalence of removing hijab means corruption”.

Resorting to the regime’s predictable rhetoric of foreign conspiracy theories, he, like all the Iranian spokespeople across government and theocrats, said it was foreign influence which had led to the current problems.

”The goal of the enemies is to destroy the independence of Iranian women, because a woman without hijab will not be independent and free and will be a person who is bound by others’ lust,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Reza Shahrokhi, the representative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Lorestan province reiterated the hijab law, inciting yet more violence as he urged the “revolutionary youths and clerics” to deal with the "norm breakers”.

Earlier, Hossein Jalali, one of the most radical parliamentarians in Iran, presented the details of a new plan for mandatory hijab, including fines of up to three billion tomans (nearly $60,000), saying that Ali Khamenei had approved the plan.

A police official in Khuzestan Province said Saturday that fifty-five businesses, were shut down in Ahvaz, the capital of the province, for breaking the rules of fasting.

Colonel Mohammad-Hossein Mohammadvand said 229 businesses were inspected, 55 were shut down and 14 others received warnings that they will be shut down if they do not abide by the rules. Inspection will continue until the end of Ramadhan, he said. Similar inspections are carried out in other cities across the country.

During the fasting month which started March 23, restaurants, cafes and coffee shops, tea houses, ice-cream and juice bars have to remain closed until fasting ends around sunset. In the capital Tehran, this falls at around 18:35 at this time of year.

The rules apply to and are enforced in all public places including gyms, schools, universities and factories where cafeterias are closed throughout the month. Even eating inside cars is not allowed.

The fasting month of Ramadan in the Islamic lunar calendar has coincided with Nowrouz (Nowruz) and its holidays. Authorities have been urging people to report if they witness anyone violates fasting in public or hijab rules, by sending text messages to designated numbers or online.

A government-sponsored billboard in the city of Shiraz urges visitors to the city to report hijab, fasting disrespect to the authorities.

Those taking trips during Ramadan are not required to fast if they travel farther than 45km from home and intend to return at least ten days later, according to Sharia. Restaurants situated inside hotels, on transit roads or airports and train stations can apply for special permits to cater to the needs of travelers but they must completely cover their windows so that patrons eating inside cannot be seen from the outside.

“Serving kebabs and other grilled food is prohibited before iftar,” regulations announced by Tehran police Wednesday said while stressing that the number of permits issued in any given neighborhood or city should be low enough not to blur “the difference between this month and ordinary months”.

The religious establishment and its supporters say people should not eat in public during the fasting month “out of respect for those who fast” but many among the non-fasting citizens believe this is unfair.

“You are fasting, Okay, but why should I not be able to eat?” a tweeter protested. “The [real] reason for keeping restaurants closed is not to allow the huge number of those who don’t fast to be revealed.”

Another tweet protested that food businesses must suffer so that the faith of the religious is not threatened with temptation to eat. “You morons, you are fasting so that you feel and understand what it means [not to be able to eat] to the poor!”

Shiite clerics have even coined a term for the acts of eating, drinking, or smoking in public during the fasting hours, which could very loosely be translated into “showing off in public that one is not fasting”. This ‘crime’ is punishable by ten to sixty days of prison or up to 74 lashes according to article 638 of Iran's Islamic Penal Code.

There are similar rules and cash fines and prison terms for eating in public during Ramadan in most Islamic countries including Qatar, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.