Iran electronically surveilling girls to seek out headband violations, U.N. report says
Iran more and more depends on digital surveillance and the general public to tell on girls refusing to put on the nation’s necessary headband in public, whilst hard-liners push for harsher penalties for these protesting the regulation, a United Nations report launched Friday discovered.
The findings of the Unbiased Worldwide Reality-Discovering Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran come after it decided final 12 months that the nation’s theocracy was chargeable for the “bodily violence” that led to the demise of Mahsa Amini. Her demise led to nationwide protests towards the nation’s necessary hijab legal guidelines and the general public disobedience towards them that continues immediately, regardless of the specter of violent arrest and imprisonment.
“Two and a half years after the protests started in September 2022, girls and women in Iran proceed to face systematic discrimination, in regulation and in observe, that permeates all points of their lives, notably with respect to the enforcement of the necessary hijab,” the report mentioned.
“The state is more and more reliant on state-sponsored vigilantism in an obvious effort to enlist companies and personal people in hijab compliance, portraying it as a civic accountability.”
Iran’s mission to the U.N. in New York didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the findings of the 20-page report.
In it, U.N. investigators define how Iran more and more depends on digital surveillance. Among the many efforts embody Iranian officers deploying “aerial drone surveillance” to watch girls in public locations. At Tehran’s Amirkabir College, authorities put in facial recognition software program at its entrance gate to additionally discover girls not sporting the hijab, it mentioned.
Surveillance cameras on Iran’s main roadways are also believed to be concerned in looking for uncovered girls. U.N. investigators mentioned they obtained the “Nazer” cell phone app provided by Iranian police, which permits “vetted” members of the general public and the police to report on uncovered girls in automobiles, together with ambulances, buses, metro vehicles and taxis.
“Customers could add the situation, date, time and the license plate variety of the automobile through which the alleged necessary hijab infraction occurred, which then ‘flags’ the automobile on-line, alerting the police,” the report mentioned. “It then triggers a textual content message (in real-time) to the registered proprietor of the automobile, warning them that that they had been present in violation of the necessary hijab legal guidelines, and that their automobiles could be impounded for ignoring these warnings.”
These textual content messages have led to harmful conditions. In July 2024, law enforcement officials shot and paralyzed a girl who activists say had obtained such a message and was fleeing a checkpoint close to the Caspian Sea.
Amini’s demise sparked months of protests and a safety crackdown that killed greater than 500 individuals and led to the detention of greater than 22,000. After the mass demonstrations, police dialed down enforcement of hijab legal guidelines, but it surely ramped up once more in April 2024 beneath what authorities referred to as the Noor – or “Mild” – Plan. At the very least 618 girls have been arrested beneath the Noor Plan, the U.N. investigators mentioned, citing a neighborhood human rights activist group in Iran.
In the meantime, Iran executed at the least 938 individuals final 12 months, a threefold improve from 2021, the U.N. mentioned. Whereas many have been convicted of drug fees, the report mentioned the executions “point out a nexus with the general repression of dissent on this interval.”
“That is consistent with the authorities’ longstanding use of the demise penalty and executions to instill concern and as a device of political repression towards dissenting voices, together with protesters and minorities,” the U.N. report mentioned.
As Iran continues its crackdown over the hijab, it additionally faces an financial disaster over U.S. sanctions attributable to its quickly advancing nuclear program. Whereas U.S. President Donald Trump has referred to as for brand new negotiations, Iran has but to answer a letter he despatched to its 85-year-old Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Social unrest, coupled with the financial woes, stay a priority for Iran’s theocracy.
Haley Ott
contributed to this report.
