IRAN-WOMEN – TELAM Agency
A group of United Nations rapporteurs today described as “gender apartheid” the new bill being reviewed by the Iranian Parliament to expand punishments against women and girls who do not wear the veil in public spaces, in a tightening of measures to following the protests unleashed in September 2022 following the death in custody of a woman detained for allegedly wearing the hijab poorly.
“The draft can be described as a type of gender apartheid, since the authorities seem to be ruling through systematic discrimination with the intention of forcing women and girls into total submission,” denounced the rapporteurs in relation to the Bill to Support the Family by Promoting the Culture of Chastity and Hijab.
Thus, they stressed that the initiative “imposes harsh punishments on women and girls for not complying (the use of the veil), which could lead to a violent application (of the measure),” reported the Europa Press news agency.
“The project also violates fundamental rights, including those of participation in cultural life, the prohibition of gender discrimination, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to peaceful protest, the right to access social, educational and health services and freedom of movement,” they added.
They also criticized that with the project the authorities seek to authorize institutions to deny public services and opportunities to people who do not comply with this law through the link to “nudity, lack of chastity, absence of hijab and acts against public decency” with “disturbances of the peace.
In this regard, they emphasized that “weaponizing public morality to deny women and girls their freedom of expression is disempowering and will reinforce and expand gender discrimination and marginalization, with broader negative consequences for children and society as a whole.
The UN rapporteurs also pointed out against the application since the beginning of July of a new system of punishments in relation to the use of the veil, accompanied by the redeployment of agents of the so-called Morality Police after months of withdrawal due to protests following the death of the young Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini.
“The punishments include the deprivation of a series of basic, social and economic rights, which disproportionately affect economically marginalized women,” they explained and demanded that the authorities “reconsider the legislation on the obligatory nature of the hijab” and that “guarantee the full enjoyment of human rights by women and girls in Iran”.
Source: Ambito
