TEHRAN, 25 April 2007 — The police force were facing increasing criticism yesterday for their handling of a nationwide crackdown aimed at making women abide by Iran’s Islamic dress code. Thousands of women have been warned and hundreds arrested for wearing overly loose head scarves or excessively tight coats, prompting warnings in the press that the authorities should be focusing on other economic priorities.
Even the overall head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who is appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged police against heavy-handed actions against women found to have broken the rules.
“Hauling women and young people to the police station will have no use except to cause damage to society,” the reformist Etemad Melli newspaper quoted Shahroudi as telling a meeting of local governors. “Tough measures on social problems will backfire and have counter-productive effects,” he warned.
Witnesses have said that the drive, launched on Saturday, has not been universally popular on Tehran’s streets, with parents of the women apprehended in particular unafraid of making their feelings clear to the police. Reformist newspapers and the ISNA student news agency reported that 2,000 students at a prestigious university in the southern city of Shiraz staged a protest on Sunday night over new restrictions on conduct and clothing.
The protests were triggered by a new code of conduct banning the students from wearing shorts and sleeveless vests outside rooms in their strictly segregated dormitories and an extended curfew. It is not clear whether the new directive was in line with the nationwide clampdown on dressing, which also applies to men.
Critics in the media also complained that the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had more important issues to deal with, citing the country’s soaring inflation and high unemployment rates. “Mr. President, I wonder if what the police, supervised by your Interior Ministry, are doing to women stems from a misunderstanding?” asked Masih Alinejad, a columnist in the Etemad Melli daily.
