Iran has abolished the morality police, a force that monitored people’s clothing and detained especially women who did not cover themselves according to codes dictated by the Islamic Republic’s system, said the country’s attorney general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri.
That police “has nothing to do with the Judiciary,” Montazeri said in statements released last night by the local Iranian news agency ISNA, in what analysts consider a cession to the popular protest movement that the country has been registering for three months.
Montazeri explained that the judiciary will continue its monitoring of behaviour at the community level and stressed that women’s dress remains very important, especially in the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran.
“The hijab (Islamic veil) evil in the country, especially in the holy city of Qom, is one of the main concerns of the judiciary as well as our revolutionary society, but it should be noted that judicial action is the last resort and cultural measures precede any other,” Montazeri said in a speech at a meeting with clerics in Qom.
The city of Qom is the theological center of Iran, where the main seminaries of the country are located and where thousands of pilgrims and seminarians from all over the world visit and study.
Death toll would double
Iran has been experiencing widespread protests since September 16, after the death in police custody of the 22-year-old Kurdish Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested precisely by the morality police for allegedly wearing the Islamic veil wrong.
The protests include demands for the end of the Islamic Republic. “This is not about protest, this is a revolution”, “we do not want an Islamic Republic”, “death to the dictator”, are some slogans shouted by demonstrators in street protests or at night from the windows of their houses and write on the walls of buildings since last September.
According to Iran’s Security Council, “more than 200 people” have been killed since the beginning of the protests, but foreign NGOs, such as Oslo-based Iran Human Rights, put the death toll at 448 due to heavy police repression.
In addition, at least 2,000 people have been charged with various crimes for their participation in the mobilizations, of which six have been sentenced to death.
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