The Prosecutor General of Iran Mohammad Jafar Montazeri announced the abolition of the vice police by the competent authorities, Isna news agency reported today.
"The vice police has nothing to do with the judiciary and was abolished by the authorities that created it," Montazeri said last Saturday night from the holy city of Qom.
Law on compulsory headscarf
It will be recalled that authorities in Iran yesterday Saturday asked the judiciary and parliament to review a 1983 law on compulsory headscarf in order to find a way out of the protest movement that has erupted for more than two months in the country.
Iran is facing daily protests following the death on 16 September of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman three days after she was arrested by vice police for not wearing her headscarf properly.[BR]Since then, Iranian women have taken to the streets and some have taken off or burned their headscarves in public.
Yesterday Saturday, Iran's Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said that "parliament and the judicial authorities are working" on the issue of making the headscarf compulsory, without specifying whether the law might be amended.
This issue is particularly sensitive in Iran with two opposing camps in conflict: that of conservatives who insist on the 1983 law and that of progressives who want women to be able to choose whether or not to wear the headscarf.
The headscarf became compulsory in Iran four years after the Islamic revolution of 1979. The vice police were created to "spread the culture of modesty and wearing a headscarf".
According to the 1983 law, women in Iran - local and foreign, regardless of religion, must wear a headscarf and loose-fitting clothes in public.
As of July 5, a new law "on the headscarf and modesty in the country", promoted by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, imposed new restrictions on women: the headscarf must cover not only their hair, but also their necks and shoulders.
However, during a press conference held yesterday in Tehran, Raisi appeared to be open to possible changes in the legislation. "Our Constitution has values and principles that are stable and unshakable (...) but there are ways of implementing the Constitution that can be reviewed," he said.
Many victims
After Amini's death and the protests that followed, more and more women started walking around without headscarves, especially in the north of Tehran.
On 24 September, a week after the protests began, the main reformist party in Iran called on the authorities to lift the compulsory wearing of the headscarf.
The People's Union of Islamic Iran, founded by close associates of reformist former president Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), announced that it "asked" the authorities "to prepare legal instruments that will pave the way towards the cancellation of the mandatory headscarf legislation," according to a party statement in late September.
The party also asked Iranian authorities to "officially announce the end of the vice police" and "allow peaceful demonstrations."
A total of 448 protesters have been killed since the protests began, according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights.
Iran's Supreme National Security Council said yesterday that "more than 200 people", civilians and members of law enforcement forces, had been killed, while on Monday General Amirali Hazizadeh of the Revolutionary Guards had said more than 300 people had been killed.
In addition, thousands of people have been arrested. Yesterday another film actress, Mitra Hazar, was arrested at her home for recently posting a video on her Instagram account of the October protests in Berlin in solidarity with the movement in Iran.
Source: APE-MPA
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