A viral video from Iran shows an incident last week where two women were attacked by a man who threw yoghurt on them for not wearing hijabs.
The women, a mother and her daughter, according to one source, entered a store in the northeastern city of Shandiz without covering their heads. The man approached one of the women who was unveiled and spoke to her before grabbing a tub of yogurt from a nearby shelf and throwing it on the women, hitting them both in the head.
According to the state-run media for Iran’s judiciary, Mizan News Agency, which released the video, the two women were arrested for failing to wear the hijab in public — defying the country’s mandatory dress code.
Iranian officials said the male attacker was arrested for a disturbance of order, after he was removed from the store by a staff member.
Over the weekend, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi addressed the incident, repeating his mandate that wearing the hijab is compulsory.
“The important matter is that today we have a legal mandate,” he said, in comments cited by Reuters. “The legal mandate makes it mandatory for everyone to follow the law.”
Appearing on state television, Raisi said, “If there are people who say that they do not share this belief of ours (regarding the mandatory hijab), then this is a place for scientific and cultural centers as well as schools to discuss this and convince them.”
“It’s good to use persuasion,” he added. “But the important point is that there is a legal requirement … and the hijab is today a legal matter.”
On Saturday, Iran’s Ministry of Interior tweeted a message, saying, “hijab is an unquestionable religious necessity.”
The Ministry of Interior issued a statement urging the enforcement of Hijab in public places. This statement also encouraged citizens to perform their religious duty of "enjoining good and forbidding wrong" and warn women with improper Hijabs.#Iran pic.twitter.com/djXFa6Noxo
— HRANA English (@HRANA_English) March 31, 2023
n yet another case of a woman being penalised for not complying with the compulsory Hijab law, HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, reported on Maryam Bani-Razi, a female resident of Qom, who was sentenced to over eight months in jail and 148 lashes.
Bani-Razi was sentenced to prison for “disturbing public order,” and a two-year ban from her job as a nurse for “committing an outrage on public modesty.”
According to a video from late last year, Bani-Razi entered a bank and removed her headscarf.
Since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last September while she was detained in police custody, Iranian citizens have protested against the country’s lack of human rights.
As women have burned their headscarves and cut their hair, taken to the streets and defied the law by dancing in public, young girls are being poisoned in schools, while protestors continue to be sentenced to death and executed.
According to the New York Times, at least four people have been executed by the Iranian government since the beginning of the year, and ten are on death row.
Source » womensagenda