Iranian activists called to protest with mobilizations and strikes following the confusing announcement of the alleged dismantling of the Morale Police by the General Prosecutor’s Office.
After the uncertainty regarding the supposed dismantling of the Morality Police, announced by the ayatollahs regime, the Tehran Neighborhood Youth activists’ collective and others called on Iranians to go on a labor strike this Monday, to demonstrate in the neighborhoods on Tuesday and to gather in the central Azadi (Freedom) square on Wednesday.
“Unity is one of the factors for victory,” said the group on social networks.
Iran lives protests since the death on September 16, Name Masha Believe, following being arrested three days earlier by the Moral Police for wearing the Islamic veil wrong.
The demonstrations are also being harshly repressed by the security forces.
In the almost three months of protests, more than 400 people have died, and at least 2,000 have been accused of various crimes for their participation in the mobilizations, of which six have been sentenced to death.
The riots began over the death of the 22-year-old Kurdish girl, but have evolved, and now the protesters are calling for the end of the Islamic Republic founded by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979.
The new call to protest comes a day following the country’s attorney general, Mohamad Jafar Montazeri, allegedly affirmed that the Moral Police, a force that monitors people’s clothing and detained especially women who did not cover themselves in accordance with the codes dictated by the Islamic Republic, has been abolished.
But hours later, official media confirmed that Montazeri’s words had been misinterpreted and that the body had not been deleted.
The Moral Police depends on the Ministry of the Interior and the Supreme Cultural Council of the Revolutionthat they have not ruled on the supposed dismantling of the body formed in 2005 and that has disappeared from the streets since Amini’s death.
Montazeri also referred to a possible relaxation in women’s clothing standards, something that Parliament would be studying and that would be announced in regarding two weeks.
The headscarf has been mandatory in Iran since 1983, shortly following the revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, who declared that women were “naked” without it.