Iran will punish women who do not wear the hijab with treatment in a clinic

Iran takes a further step in its repression of women who do not wear the hijab – mandatory in the country – with a plan to subject them to treatment in a clinic. The Government has announced the creation of a center that it calls “rehabilitation” because it maintains that they reject the veil due to “environmental pressures” and are “forced to choose clothing outside the limits of the sharia”. The head of the Department of Women and Family, Mehri Talebi-Darestani, affirms that the women and girls themselves ask for an “environment of zeal, modesty, chastity and hijab”, but has not clarified whether passing through that clinic will imply imprisonment for non-compliance. Islamic law.

The death of the young Mahsa Amini in 2022, when she was in police custody for wearing her veil incorrectly, unleashed a wave of protests in Iran under the slogan Women, Life and Freedom. Many women stopped wearing the veil and have been persecuted and punished by the so-called morality police.

The opening of the clinic for “scientific treatments, psychological services and counseling,” as defined by the Government, comes just two weeks after the arrest of Ahou Daryaei, a 30-year-old Iranian student who was arrested at the Free University of Tehran. after stripping down to her underwear in protest against the dress code. The authorities assured that Daryaei was a “problematic” person who would receive psychological “treatment.” The new establishment will be supervised by the Ministry of Good and the Prohibition of Evil and will provide “services” that will include individual counseling, group meetings and training workshops in the “management of social pressures”, aimed at “people suffering from stress or internal contradictions.”

In Talebi-Darestani’s reading, the hospital will “help” women who “have decided” to wear the hijab despite social pressure. The clinic, it says, will emphasize “the dignity of beloved women,” for which it will support “the conscious choice of healthy clothing, focusing on Islamic and Iranian values.” The Government, however, describes these therapies as “optional”.

After the death in police custody of 22-year-old Amini, more than 22,000 people were arrested and seven were executed by hanging.

This is not the first time that the Government has tried to present women’s decision about the veil as a public health problem. In 2022, several were sentenced to pay for psychological therapy for not wearing the hijab and, as reported at the time by the semi-reformist newspaper Shargh Dailya doctor was forced to clean the Ministry of the Interior for 200 hours after being identified in her car without a veil. Some of the artists who published photos without hijab in protest of Amini’s death were also forced by justice to go to psychological centers weekly.

According to Iranian criminal regulations, women cannot show their hair and must wear loose clothing. If they do not do so, they can be fined up to 1,800 euros and sentenced to up to two months in prison. In case of recidivism, they can even receive up to 74 lashes. Following the repression of the protests, a growing number of women have led a civil disobedience movement in which they challenge the authorities by taking to the streets without the hijab. A movement that the Government seeks to confine in the new “rehabilitation” clinic.