Tehran: warning “sms” instead of morality police and blocked bank accounts

“Sms”, warning messages in place of the moral police and women’s bank accounts, which they do not wear the veil, blocked. He announced it Hossein Jalali, member of the culture commission of the Iranian parliament, as reported by the reformist daily Shargh, explaining the first points of an alternative state plan, to replace the moral police. The plan, still being studied, called “Efaf (chastity) and hijab”, will be ready in two weeks and will include “more modern and precise punitive measures against improper clothing”. Tehran thus confirms its intention to suspend the supervisory body responsible together with the Pasdaran for repressing the demonstrations.

“When it is operational, the Gasht-e Ershad (the moral police, ed) will be replaced by new measures. For example, women who do not observe the hijab will first receive SMS notifications, then warnings and in a third phase their account could be blocked,” explains the reformist daily Shargh.

And not least for the hundreds of girls who burned their hijabs in the streets, “there will be no withdrawal from the hijab floor because withdrawal means the withdrawal of the Islamic Republic”Jalali said.

The mandatory Islamic hijab, considered by some to be the Berlin Wall of the Cold War of the 1980s, the symbol par excellence of the Shiite reading of the Koran, is instead now perceived as increasingly unbearable by women and by the population who are demanding urgent reforms that can no longer be postponed both socially and economically . The protest that began almost three months ago following the death of 22-year-old Kurdish Mahsa Amini, precisely due to a lock of hair sticking out of her hijab, is only the latest, but not least, of strong protests against the Islamic Republic of the last 40 years.

Jalali yesterday referred to new measures to be put into practice in the coming weeks regarding theuse of the veil in public, mandatory in the Islamic Republic since its foundation in 1979. His statements had appeared as “a denial” of what the Attorney General Montazeri He said saturday regarding a “temporary closure” using the term تعطیل (tatil) in Persian, of the moral police Iranian, in charge of monitoring compliance with the precepts of the Sharia on the population.

A protest, the one underway, which has now become unstoppable and involves the whole country. During the night they continued in the capital Tehran, in Kuzaran, Karaj, Mashad, Rasht, Shiraz and Arak, after activists had called a three-day strike, starting yesterday, pending the Student day tomorrow in which a general mobilization is expected. Some videos released on social media by activists show mainly peaceful demonstrations with groups of women and men shouting slogans against the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, not without moments in which protesters set fires in the middle of the road to block traffic or throw objects at buildings. The Pasdarans have announced that they have arrested 12 suspects “saboteurs” in Markazi province, southwest of Tehran, on charges of carrying out “activities against national security”. The group allegedly had “foreign connections” in particular with “counter-revolutionary agents living in Germany and the Netherlands”, countries in addition to those considered “enemies” by Tehran such as the USA, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

THE social they are of enormous importance in documenting the protest inside and outside the large Middle Eastern country of over 85 million inhabitants. There Internet network it is systematically blocked by the authorities to prevent the dissemination of news about the repression. More than 20 human rights activists, journalists and diplomats have been affected by hackers linked to Tehran, who stole their data and information, according to a report by two human rights organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. This was reported by Bloomberg, according to which the hackers would have entered the computers of the victims through a message Whatsappeven attempting in some cases to access the cloud’s data Google of their targets. According to the report, the attacks and attempted interference were carried out by a group known as Apt42, which is allegedly controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. In the report, HRW also criticized Google for not doing enough to safeguard its users’ data.

Meanwhile the judiciary does not stop, five of those arrested for stabbing paramilitary force member Basij Ruhollah Ajamian to death on November 3 in Karaj were sentenced to death, on charges of “corruption on earth” for having an actual role in the murder. The confirmation by the spokesman of the judiciary Massoud Setayeshi. “11 other defendants in the same case, including three minors, were sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment,” he added, quoted by the IRNA.

The regime also affects the press, there are about forty journalists in prison, now joined by the deputy director of the Iranian press agency Fars, close to the authorities, arrested “for falsifying news”, according to IRIB. Abbas Darvish Tavanger “is still in custody so that we can know the reasons why he was rigging the news and creating false information”.

In prison are 18,000 people from the latest protests, well-known and lesser-known names in Iran. Among them there is Fahimeh Karimi volleyball coach and mother of three. She was arrested during a demonstration in Pakdasht, in the province of Tehran, she is accused of being one of the leaders of the rebellion demonstrations and of kicking a Basiji paramilitary, according to media and social media reports.

“Fahimeh was my cellmate for 34 days. One day she left her cell to go to the infirmary, and never came back” wrote Alessia Piperno on her Istagram – “There weren’t any great conversations between us, since I didn’t speak Farsi and she didn’t speak English. But we were united by the same pain and fears Hello beautiful, and you start crying, other times you clap my hands. I would like to tell you more, but what can I tell you? I’ve been looking up her name every day since I got back, to see if they’d released her too. Instead I found myself in front of an article with her face written ‘sentenced to death’ What does it take to stop all this?”. She continued the Roman travel blogger, arrested in Iran and then released.