Female students living in fear under new hijab crackdown

Female students in Iran are reporting feelings of fear and apprehension when entering university campuses after the regime in Tehran began a new crackdown to enforce the wearing of the hijab or head covering, reportedly deploying more than 32 agencies to enforce it and sometimes inflicting beatings upon those who do not comply.

The new campaign, called Noor, which means ‘light’, has been implemented by the State Security Force since around mid-April. It enforces a law approved by the Iranian parliament last September but not yet officially in force as it is still to be approved by Iran’s Guardian Council – made up of clerics and jurists – who have the power to veto the bill if they consider it to contravene Sharia law.

The latest draft of the new hijab bill – officially known as “Supporting the Family by Promoting the Culture of Chastity and Hijab” – has not been released, but an earlier version stipulates that those found guilty of violating the mandatory dress code could face up to 10 years’ imprisonment, floggings and fines, the UN Human Rights office said in a 26 April statement.

“Corporal punishment constitutes a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and any detention, imposed for the exercise of fundamental freedoms, is arbitrary under international law. We reiterate that this bill must be shelved,” the statement said.

The statement follows reports of the flogging in January of 33-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Roya Heshmati who was lashed 74 times on her back before a judge for not wearing the hijab in a photograph posted on social media last year.

Campus surveillance

Surveillance on campuses has been stepped up since early April. On 10 April, the Voice of Al-Zahra University Students Telegram channel reported “stricter security measures” and the installation of what they said were “face recognition cameras” at the entrances and exits of the women’s university in Tehran.

Some universities such as the University of Tehran have deployed their own ‘hijab enforcers’.

Mohammad Mighimi, acting president of the University of Tehran confirmed the presence of hijab enforcers on campus as far back as last November. He said they were women with “seminary education” organised into campus monitoring groups.

However, this week Mehdi Shabazi, in charge of cultural and social affairs at the university, stepped up the enforcement campaign, saying “serious measures” would be taken against those who flouted the compulsory hijab policy.

In a report on 25 April, the Women’s Committee of Iranian exile organisation the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said in the past few weeks students at various universities had reported feeling fear and apprehension when entering their campuses.

The NCRI Women’s Committee strongly condemned “the escalated suppression of women under the pretext of combating improper veiling as a desperate effort by the misogynistic regime of the mullahs to quell any potential uprising”.

But as the state-run Khabar online news service noted, the way students are treated varies across universities rather than being enforced in a systematic manner in all universities. Khabar emphasised that the lack of a single policy was confusing, and some students were held to account one day for wearing clothes that were deemed “proper” just the day before.

Hijab bill

The hijab bill has been deliberated by Parliament’s judicial committee behind closed doors. NCRI noted that in the process the number of articles in the bill has been increased from 15 to 72.

The UN Human Rights Office has expressed alarm at the draft bill which would impose tougher sentences on women.

“What we have seen and what we are hearing is, in the past months, the authorities, whether they be plain clothes police or policemen in uniform, are increasingly enforcing the hijab bill,” Jeremy Laurence, a spokesman for the office said at a 26 April press conference in Geneva.

Hundreds of women who openly oppose the mandatory dress code have been violently arrested on the streets and taken into detention, according to videos posted online. Even some religious figures supportive of enforcement have criticised the way it is being done.

“As there is no hijab law, this is still based on the old methods,” explained University of Oslo Professor Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam who is also co-founder of Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) based in Norway. He noted that the latest crackdown occurred shortly after a speech on 10 April by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, to mark the festival of Eid. In that speech he emphasised the need for compulsory hijab.

Amiry-Moghaddam also pointed to reports of harsh, extra-judicial punishments. “We have heard [about] some places where they put a blanket over a woman who did not wear the hijab and carried her into the car. It’s insane,” Amiry-Moghaddam told University World News.

Hijab as a security issue

The state-run Bahar News website reported on 16 April that Aga Tehrani, the head of parliament’s Cultural Commission, called on 32 agencies to deal with the hijab issue. He stated, “All agencies should participate in this matter, as we all bear responsibility for it; it should not be solely the task of the police or the Ministry of Interior … the government should be actively engaged, and it is urged that all ministers take the initiative.”

However, Amiry-Moghaddam said: “There are not several agencies dealing with the hijab issue; it’s all [under] the police. They make it confusing and complicated. But all these agencies are part of what we call the repressive forces. There are so many of them in Iran, but the order, the green light, came from the Supreme Leader.”

The regime claimed last year that the so-called ‘morality police’, which previously enforced compulsory hijab and other ‘chastity’ rules, and was the focus of much international criticism, had been disbanded.

It was in the custody of the morality police that 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, arrested for ‘improper hijab’, died in September 2022, launching prolonged unrest across the country.

“There is no official agency or ‘hijab guardians’ or something like that,” Amiry-Moghaddam said. “They are all part of the whole repressive machinery.”

He said hijab compliance “has always been considered a security issue by the regime”.

“Officially they talk about ‘morality’ but when they want to discuss what to do with these women, they discuss it in the National Security Council. So, it's a security issue, and it's because a totalitarian regime cannot tolerate or cannot survive if half the people don't respect its authority anymore,” he said.

“After the protests [in the wake of Amini’s death] that were probably the biggest crisis the Islamic Republic [Iran] has been through in the last 44 years, they still haven't managed to take back control,” said Amiry-Moghaddam. “In recent weeks, due to the escalating tension between Iran and Israel, it's a golden opportunity because the international community isn’t paying as much attention to what's going on inside Iran.

“They try [to crack down] whenever they can, and in as many places as they can. And of course, they also must be careful so that it doesn't trigger new protests,” he added.

Open defiance

Small protests have occurred, but Amiry-Moghaddam said these were isolated incidents compared to the large-scale protests that lasted for months after the death of Mahsa Amini.

Over 200 students from Amirkabir University in Tehran went on strike on Sunday 21 and Monday 22 April, refusing to attend classes after security personnel at two universities in Tehran – the University of Art and Amirkabir University – intervened to bar students because of their attire on Saturday 20 April.

The Amirkabir News Telegram channel reported that on Saturday, at least 200 students were barred from entering the university premises due to what was deemed “un-Islamic clothing”.

The strike involved students from the faculties of computer engineering, energy engineering, industrial engineering, textile engineering, and mathematics. Additionally, numerous classes in medical engineering, chemical engineering, marine engineering, and mining engineering were also disrupted.

A student from the University of Art, which is adjacent to Amirkabir University, said security guards detained numerous individuals at their university entrance. A student from the University of Art expressed concern over the oppressive atmosphere on campus with security patrols leading to arbitrary arrests.

Amiry-Moghaddam said repression and arrests were increasing on the streets and on transport systems. “And now students and workers have been targeted”, he said, although so far there have been no mass expulsions from universities, as was the case 12 to 18 months ago.

Nonetheless, he noted: “The number of students [flouting the rules] is so high that the regime needs to prioritise who to take and who to expel. Their priority, first of all, is those who appeal to the other students and anyone able to organise or who might be involved in mobilising others in the future. They are the targets. Individuals are in the second round.”