The Iranian government’s attempts to use technology to enforce dress code on women has been met with backlash and derision on social media.
The Iranian police chief Ahmad Reza Radan in April announced that Tehran is launching a ‘smart’ programme to identify women failing to cover their hair or wear loose-fitting clothing in public spaces using surveillance cameras and threatened to fine and imprison them.
The police chief also warned earlier that if women were seen travelling in cars more than once without the hijab their vehicles would be confiscated. Businesses were also warned against turning a blind eye and threatened with closures if enforcement failed.
A report by the BBC pointed out that Radan’s move was met with derision on social media.
However, a woman told the BBC that she received an SMS from the authorities after her car was flagged for carrying people who violated the dress code. But when a man received an SMS for travelling without a headscarf and that too when he was not travelling with a woman, people pointed out that the cameras were not accurate.
The BBC report highlighted that the man later sent his photo to the news agency which revealed he had long hair, which might have confused the cameras.
“Dear citizen, it is necessary to respect and comply with the law of the hijab,” is the SMS that many men told the BBC that they received. “Is this how smart your technology is,” a man said on social media in response.
“The confiscation of cars because of a lack of hijab has no legal basis in the constitution and is a crime,” Iranian citizen Mohsen Borhani said in a tweet.
Meanwhile, women, young and old, said that they would resist the diktat from the Iranian government even though there is an increased risk of being punished.
Iran was in turmoil for at least two months following the death of Mahsa Amini last September in the custody of the Iranian moral police aka, the Gasht-e-Ershad. The moral police responsible for enforcing strict dressing rules on women in public places allegedly hit her on the head, leading to a grievous injury that led to her death.
Chants of women shouting “Woman, Life, Freedom” and burning their headscarves or waving them in the air captured global attention. Women speaking to the BBC said that Iranian women will not surrender.
“This is an Islamic dictatorship, one of its main pillars is the oppression and control of women, that is why the fight against mandatory hijab is something that really shakes the core of this system,” a woman was quoted as saying by the BBC.
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