Iranian authorities are again cracking down on women breaking the country’s strict dress code as they try to reassert control after last year’s momentous protests that were rooted in demands for more freedoms in the Islamic Republic.

This week, authorities shut down an office of the country’s leading e-commerce business, Digikala, popularly known as Iran’s Amazon, after its female staff was seen on social media without the obligatory headscarf, or hijab. They have also reinstated widely reviled street patrols to enforce the country’s Islamic dress code, and shut hundreds of cafes, restaurants and amusement parks where staffers were seen to violate it.

Police recently closed a new hair salon after a video of unveiled women at its opening celebration went viral, and punishments for violations are increasingly designed to attract public attention.

This month a court sentenced a woman to a month of washing and preparing corpses for burial, after she was caught driving without her headscarf in a city south of the capital, Tehran. Another woman was sentenced to 270 hours of cleaning government-owned buildings for allegedly flouting the hijab law.

The fresh pressure on Iranians comes after the country’s police said this month that officers would resume street patrols to uphold the dress code, which requires women to cover their hair with a headscarf and the shape of their bodies with loose clothing. Men have been scolded for wearing shorts.

  • robocall@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    They could use their resources for more pressing issues affecting the community rather than a headscarf task force.