Iran confiscates tens of thousands of cars belonging to unveiled women, says Amnesty International

Monireh is the false name of one of the tens of thousands of Iranian women who have seen the authorities confiscate their car for what is still a crime in Iran: showing all or part of their hair, as reported this Wednesday in a statement. Amnesty International (AI).

This woman had just undergone major surgery and had “many stitches” in her chest, when she received a first text message on her cell phone informing her that her car was going to be impounded after being seen in public. without veil.

After a soldier blocked her way on the street and took her to the police station, she had to hand over the keys to the vehicle, which was immobilized.

According to this Tehran resident, in the parking lot designated by the police she spoke with a man, whose car had also been confiscated.

Pointing to her daughter, he told Monireh: “I have been fined many times because of this girl's long hair.”

The youngest was nine years old.

Monireh's case is not the worst of those reported by Amnesty International in its denunciation of “the campaign of massive repression” of Iranian women who do not wear the hijab, but it does represent a step further—and a novelty—in the list of measures. applied by the regime against women without veils.

The document states that the country's regime has not only "arbitrarily confiscated the vehicles of tens of thousands of women," but that a very high number of them or their relatives have been sentenced to fines or to attend "morality" classes. ” for that reason, in addition to suffering an ordeal of humiliation and threats.

These women even risk ending up in prison and, in at least one case mentioned by Amnesty, a woman was sentenced to the most severe penalty under the Iranian Penal Code for violating veil legislation: 74 lashes.

The victim of that sentence was the activist Roya Heshmati, who was punished in January for appearing in public with her head uncovered.

Thousands of Iranians have removed the veil as a gesture of civil disobedience since September 16, 2022. That day, Mahsa Yina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish girl who was visiting Tehran, died in police custody in a hospital in the city. , three days after being arrested by the morality police, who accused her of wearing her veil incorrectly.

Her death sparked the worst wave of anti-regime protests in recent years, with tens of thousands of Iranians shouting “Women, life and freedom” and “Death to the dictator” in the streets.

Demonstrations across the country were put down with repression.

At least 500 people died at the hands of security forces and paramilitaries, according to human rights organizations.

More than 22,000 were arrested and, so far, at least eight men have been hanged, one of them in public.

Neither this repression nor the bill that toughens penalties for Iranian women for not wearing a veil have deterred many women from disobeying the veil law.

The deep political content of rejection of the regime that this gesture has acquired explains the multiplication of measures by the country's authorities to force these women to cover themselves again.

The Amnesty statement documents some of these methods.

The organization has collected a total of testimonies from 41 women - one of them transgender - a girl and four men in various provinces of the country.

In all cases, the pattern of persecution for not wearing a scarf or wearing it “inappropriately” is similar.

Various police forces, Iranian intelligence agents, Basij paramilitaries, plainclothes police and cameras in the streets, institutes and shopping centers monitor the women and their profiles on social networks, interrogate them at street checkpoints, follow them while they drive or travel by car. car and photograph them and the license plates of their vehicles, which they then enter into a computer application.

These Iranian women then receive threats through messages or phone calls, in which they are ordered to report to the morality police – the police force that arrested Amini – and hand over their vehicle.

The police also station themselves on the street to enter the license plates of the women's cars into the application that determines whether the vehicle has a confiscation order.

This campaign has been so massive that, on occasions, even men have been called out for not wearing a veil, after street cameras confused them with women because of their long hair, or for wearing a turban or a hat.

Chased by motorcycle

Amnesty International has documented at least 11 cases in which women were even chased by officers on motorcycles or cars along roads, in situations that endangered their safety, and the immediate confiscation of their cars, even in isolated places, where the The driver was then abandoned alone on the side of a highway or in another city without the possibility of obtaining alternative transportation.

The authorities, the international organization emphasizes, usually return the car after between 15 and 30 days.

To recover her vehicle, its owner is forced to sign a document agreeing to cover her hair.

The woman also has to pay parking and tow truck costs, even when the car has not been towed by that type of vehicle, reports one of the testimonies.

On other occasions, the sanctioned woman or adolescent ends up criminally prosecuted.

Negev, the fictitious name of a 16-year-old girl, and her mother ended up in court after the girl was reported for not wearing a hijab in the family car.

Negev was acquitted but she had to endure a severe reprimand from the judge and threats from the agents, who warned her that “next time it would be a fine and the next time, jail.”

The young woman, her mother assured Amnesty, wants to leave Iran.

The “harassment” detailed by the organization has another aspect that seriously impacts the autonomy of unveiled Iranian women: the denial of services.

For example, the inability to access the subway without a scarf, often accompanied by verbal and even physical attacks.

One of the interviewees explained to Amnesty that her 21-year-old niece was punched in the chest for trying to enter the Tehran subway without a hijab.

Other testimonies tell how the banks refuse to serve these women.

The document also includes the case of Golnar, a 17-year-old student who was reprimanded and threatened with being handed over to agents of the Revolutionary Guard—in whose custody “horrible things happen,” she was told—after a camera at her high school I caught her in a class dancing without a veil with her friends.

They were celebrating her good grades.

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