An Iranian lawmaker on Sunday said that Iran’s government is “paying attention to the people’s real demands,” state media reported, a day after a top official suggested that the country’s morality police whose conduct helped trigger months of protests has been shut down.
The role of the morality police, which enforces veiling laws, came under scrutiny after a detainee, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, died in its custody in mid-September. Amini had been held for allegedly contravening the Islamic republic’s strict dress codes. Her death unleashed a wave of unrest that has grown into calls for the downfall of Iran’s clerical rulers.
On Saturday, Iranian Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said the morality police “had been closed,” the semi-official news agency Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reported. It did not provide details, and state media have not reported such a purported decision.
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In a report carried by ISNA on Sunday, Iranian lawmaker Nezamoddin Mousavi signaled a less confrontational approach toward the protests.
“Both the administration and parliament insisted that paying attention to the people’s demand that is mainly economic is the best way for achieving stability and confronting the riots,” he said, following a closed meeting with several senior Iranian officials, including Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
Mousavi did not address the reported closure of the morality police.
The Associated Press has been unable to confirm the current status of the force, established in 2005 with the task of arresting people who contravene the country’s Islamic dress code.
Since September, there has been a reported decline in the number of morality police officers across Iranian cities and an increase in women walking in public without headscarves, contrary to Iranian law.
Montazeri provided no further details about the future of the morality police or if its closure was nationwide and permanent.
However, he added that Iran’s judiciary would “continue to monitor behavior at the community level.”
In a report by ISNA on Friday, Montazeri was quoted as saying that the government was reviewing the mandatory hijab law.
“We are working fast on the issue of hijab and we are doing our best to come up with a thoughtful solution to deal with this phenomenon that hurts everyone’s heart,” Montazeri said, without offering details.
Saturday’s announcement could signal an attempt to appease the public and find a way to end the protests in which, according to rights groups, at least 470 people were killed.
More than 18,000 people have been arrested in the protests and the violent security force crackdown that followed, said Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group monitoring the demonstrations.
Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said that Montazeri’s statement about closing the morality police could be an attempt to pacify domestic unrest without making real concessions to protesters.
“The secular middle class loathes the organization [morality police] for restricting personal freedoms,” Alfoneh said.
On the other hand, the “underprivileged and socially conservative class resents how they conveniently keep away from enforcing the hijab legislation” in wealthier areas of Iran’s cities, he said.
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