Thousands of men and women form the Morality Police, an institution caught in limbo between law, conservatism, religion, and the influence of the Basij militia, which has held suffocating weight in Iranian society.
The Gasht-e-Ershad, ‘exploratory’ patrols or vice police, form a kind of autonomous limbo in Iran’s political, judicial and religious power structure. They belong to the domain of the security forces, but at the same time they do not report to the ordinary judiciary and their main support comes from the Basij militias, a paramilitary force originally created to fight the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s . role The main task is to ensure compliance with the Islamic dress code and morality regulations. The prescription works for both men and women, but essentially the patrols are committed to following the latter with an absurd hypothesis in view of Western criteria. According to some members, the point is to “protect” them from the worst male instincts by preventing them from dressing “provocatively” or “inappropriately”.
It seems like a fictional conspiracy, but since the official establishment of the institution in 2007, countless women have been punished, fined and arrested. However, its operation dates back much earlier. The Basij militias themselves have been monitoring “moral compliance” in universities for decades, where co-education begins. As of 2016, the Iranian chamber has enacted a reform of the law to limit the direct intervention of these police forces, although its powers remain vastly diffused and its weight in society remains unchanged. In practice, cases such as Masha Amini’s show that officers have the authority to make arrests and, in any case, sufficient authority to report any “violation” to the security forces and have them complete the arrests.
A patrol arrested Masha Amini in the middle of the street in mid-September because a lock of her hair was visible outside her veil. An absolute insignificance that cost him his life. The young woman died in police custody. According to the regime, the death was caused by heart problems. For family and forensic investigations, due to head trauma caused by repeated blows to the head.
Her death, though horrific, may now save many other Iranian women if it is confirmed that the repeated popular protests unleashed over the past two months and the harsh international backlash against the government will end with the disbandment of the sinister brigade. Iranian forums are ablaze with the news this Sunday morning. This has been announced by the Attorney General. It is a historic social and political step. As the prosecutor himself has argued, the moral police are alien to the Iranian judiciary. It has even been questioned by the official morality courts themselves. But solving it has traditionally been a red line for the government of a country so caught up in the designs of conservatism.
The suspicion remains that it is cosmetic surgery to show that the regime is sensitive to the protests and that it is finally providing an answer, even indirectly, to Amini’s death. Yet somehow it represents the presumed end of a sword of Damocles over thousands of civilians and especially a female group that begins to challenge the rigid behavior of the regime with colored veils or more European clothing. The law not only imposes the hijab; it also prohibits tight dresses, miniskirts or simple ripped jeans. However, the Iranian parliament admitted in a survey four years ago that 60% of women, especially young people, did not permanently adhere to the dress code. Even the President of this Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has recently endorsed the inquiry into “the processes and methods of conducting orientation patrols”.
It is estimated that some 7,000 plainclothes guards are part of the specific service fighting against “vice” in Tehran. There are of course many more, if we add the conductors who are scattered in villages and smaller towns. Most come from the Basij militia or are conscripts in military service. The volunteers are trained in the strictest religious conservatism. They can be very dangerous units, especially in the most fundamentalist villages. When the body itself decided in 2016 to strengthen itself with the approval of the police, it unleashed the anger of President Rohaní and also sent a wave of indignation through Tehran. One of the functions of this reinforcement was the use of undercover agents who to this day stop men who harass women and also those civilians who wear brightly colored clothing. They also note the license plates of the cars playing music at high volume or in which women are seen who have taken off their headscarves and are abusing the vehicle’s reservation.
Not only men belong to these sub-militias, there are also girls among their ranks dressed in the chador, the veil that covers from head to toe and leaves only part of the face uncovered. The patrols are actually four men and two women and drive trucks. They choose squares and bustling streets to ensure that Iranian women dress according to their regulations. They also tend to walk into malls, which have become large forums where they can meet, drink and chat. Some protest movements see these rounds as a “continuous and suffocating presence designed to put pressure on women to know that we are always under their watch”.
One of the problems in encountering these patrols lies in the difficulty of knowing what is right or wrong in their particular table of values. This is pointed out by the feminist movements, but also by certain institutional leaders. The law stipulates that women must cover their heads with a veil once they reach puberty, but then these militias make their own interpretations and apply criteria that may differ from each other to “prevent virtue.”
The least that can happen during an interception is the police telling a citizen how to dress or advising against the use of cosmetics. All hell can break loose from there: from getting a sanction to being taken to a “jail” to get “instruction”. This term normally includes “awareness talks”, which some humanitarian organizations say can be extended to “beating” and even “whipping”. NGOs claim that couples who have been caught kissing “inappropriately” on the street know a lot about the latter. In the lightest detentions, it is common for the victim (usually a woman) to be released the same day into the care of a man from her family who was previously required to wear “appropriate” clothing for the detainee. Masha Amini did not have that fortune.
Source: La Verdad
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