Iran abolishes morality police, says attorney general, after months-long anti-hijab protests

Iran’s attorney general was quoted in local media saying that the nation’s morality police ‘have been abolished’

Women-led, hijab-burning protests have swept Iran since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody of Tehran’s morality police on September 16

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Published: 8:46pm, 4 Dec 2022

Iran has scrapped its morality police after more than two months of protests triggered by the arrest of Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating the country’s strict female dress code, local media said Sunday.

Women-led protests, labelled “riots” by the authorities, have swept Iran since the 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin died in custody on September 16, three days after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran.

Demonstrators have burned their mandatory hijab head coverings and shouted anti-government slogans, and since Amini’s death, a growing number of women have failed to wear the hijab, particularly in parts of Tehran.

“Morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary and have been abolished,” Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

His comment came at a religious conference where he responded to a participant who asked “why the morality police were being shut down”, the report said.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew Iran’s US-backed monarchy, there has been some kind of official monitoring of the strict dress code for both men and women.

But under hardline president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the morality police – known formally as the Gasht-e Ershad or “Guidance Patrol” – was established to “spread the culture of modesty and hijab”.