IANS | 26 Apr, 2024
Numerous women and girls have been detained in Iran for failing to
heed head-covering regulations, and hundreds of businesses have been
closed for failing to enforce them, UN rights officials reported in
Geneva on Friday.
The country's morality police had announced stricter checks some
weeks ago, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.
The
move appears to be a crackdown after women began increasingly to ignore
the rules following a protest wave in the autumn of 2022.
Turk
expressed criticism of a draft law that will impose jail sentences of 10
years as well as flogging as punishment for failing to heed the rules
on covering the hair. He called on Tehran to remove sex-based
discrimination and violence.
Turk also criticised the imposition
of the death sentence on 33-year-old rapper Toomaj Salehi, whose songs
attacked political abuse in the country and who was a prominent voice
during the 2022 demonstrations.
According to Turk's office, nine
men have been executed for their role in the protests that followed the
death in detention of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, who had been
detained by the morality police for failing to cover her head properly.
