Iranian police disperse weeks-long pro-hijab protest outside parliament in Tehran
State media says encampment dismantled after ‘illegal’ 48-day sit-in to support stringent modesty law, passed a year after Mahsa Amini protests and shelved amid fierce debate
Iranian police have dispersed a weeks-long sit-in by demonstrators supporting a bill to impose harsher penalties on women who refuse to cover their hair with a hijab, state media reported Saturday.
The demonstrators — predominantly women in black full-body robes — staged the sit-in since last month outside the parliament building in Tehran.
The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan Online website said late Saturday, “After numerous negotiations with the relevant authorities and the protesters, they were requested to disperse and refrain from causing disruption, blocking roads, and creating traffic congestion for citizens.”
“A large number of the protesters complied with the police order and left the area, but, unfortunately, a small number (around 30 individuals) resisted,” Mizan added.
It published a video showing an altercation between the demonstrators and security forces ordering them to leave the area.
The official IRNA news agency said the “illegal” sit-in in favor of the new hijab bill had been in place for around 48 days.
Since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian women have been required to conceal their hair in public. However, increasing numbers, particularly in major cities including the capital Tehran, have pushed the boundaries by allowing the covering to slide back.
In September 2023, Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, approved a bill to penalize the boundary-pushing.
Officially known as the “Law on Supporting the Family through the Promotion of the Culture of Chastity and Hijab,” the bill would have imposed tougher penalties on women who refuse to wear the mandatory hijab. It also required significant fines and prison sentences for those deemed to be promoting “nudity” or “indecency.”
The bill triggered heated debate in Iran and was not submitted to the government for final approval. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who ran as a reformist candidate in the July election, has expressed uneasiness about the law and vowed to ensure the country’s morality police wouldn’t “bother” women.
In January, Iranian government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said the bill had been shelved as it “could have had serious social consequences.”
The bill was passed about a year after mass demonstrations set off by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd arrested by the country’s morality police for allegedly failing to wear her hijab properly.
More than 500 people were killed and 22,000 were arrested in the security crackdown that followed the protests. After the mass demonstrations, police dialed down enforcement of hijab laws, but it ramped up again in April 2024 under what authorities called the Noor — or “Light” — Plan.
At least 618 women have been arrested under the Noor Plan, UN investigators said in a report earlier this month, citing a local human rights activist group in Iran.
The report by the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran found that Iran was increasingly relying on informants and electronic surveillance to enforce its hijab laws.
The fact-finding mission had also determined last year that Iran’s government was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Amini’s death.
The Times of Israel Community.