‘Iran cracking down on women for failing to cover hair’: UN

Numerous women and girls have been detained in Iran for failing to heed head-covering regulations, and hundreds of businesses have been closed for failing to enforce them, UN rights officials reported in Geneva on Friday.

The country’s morality police had announced stricter checks some weeks ago, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.

The move appears to be a crackdown after women began increasingly to ignore the rules following a protest wave in the autumn of 2022.

Turk expressed criticism of a draft law that will impose jail sentences of 10 years as well as flogging as punishment for failing to heed the rules on covering the hair. He called on Tehran to remove sex-based discrimination and violence.

Turk also criticised the imposition of the death sentence on 33-year-old rapper Toomaj Salehi, whose songs attacked political abuse in the country and who was a prominent voice during the 2022 demonstrations.

According to Turk’s office, nine men have been executed for their role in the protests that followed the death in detention of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, who had been detained by the morality police for failing to cover her head properly.