Judiciary's Efforts to Counter Women's Civil Resistance with 'Surprising' Sentences

Various branches of the judiciary of the Islamic Republic have recently issued 'specific' sentences against opponents of mandatory hijab, which some say have caused 'disgrace to professions' and protesting citizens, triggering numerous reactions. In the latest example, a public court in Varamin sentenced a woman to 'one month of washing corpses in the city morgue of Tehran' as an additional punishment for 'not adhering to hijab' while driving. Images of this ruling have also been circulated on social media. This judicial ruling was issued by Mohammad Hossein Ismail Morineh, head of Branch 104 of the Criminal Court of Varamin County. In recent days, the Tehran prosecutor's office had also banned Azadeh Samadi, an Iranian cinema actress, from using social media directly or indirectly for six months due to 'unveiling'. Another part of the ruling stated that this actress, who opposes mandatory hijab, must visit 'official psychological centers' for treatment of 'antisocial personality disorder' every two weeks and provide a 'health certificate' at the end of the treatment period. Kambez Nourouzi, a lawyer, reacted to the ruling from the Varamin court in his Telegram channel, stating that regardless of the court's reasons for convicting the accused, the additional punishment determined is 'surprising'. He further wrote that a court imposing a month of corpse washing as an additional punishment 'has neither a correct understanding of humanity nor a proper understanding of punishments.' According to the 'Hana' news agency, which is affiliated with human rights activists, it was previously reported that a female resident and member of Iran's medical staff was also sentenced by the judiciary to a ban on employment and cleaning services due to 'not adhering to hijab while driving'. Ali Khaleqi, a professor of criminal law at Tehran University, criticized this judicial ruling, stating that banning a doctor (resident) from employment in all government agencies, specifically 'government health centers', due to not wearing hijab while driving on the street, is 'completely unjustified and contrary to legal standards.' Abbas Sheikh al-Islami, head of the Khorasan Bar Association, also criticized the sentencing of a woman opposing mandatory hijab to 'one month of corpse washing', saying that fortunately, one of the functions of social media is the publication of 'weak rulings' and the legal community's objections to them. This lawyer added that 'unveiling' has no relation to 'washing corpses'; if the accused had spat on the corpse or thrown trash on it, perhaps this ruling would have been appropriate to make the accused understand that 'washing corpses is also a hard job and should not be done.' Meanwhile, the 'Farhikhtegan' newspaper, published in Tehran and affiliated with Azad University, which has positions close to the government, wrote in its issue on Saturday, July 24, that 'with bad taste, we place the religious obligation of hijab and the obligatory washing of corpses against each other, and in such a ruling, we have placed religion against religion.' The newspaper further stated that there may be fewer 'badly veiled women' who would come and say they became veiled due to a 'fine of a few hundred tomans' or decided to wear their clothing according to Islam due to 'such and such a hijab gathering at Azadi Stadium'. Even fewer may be found who became veiled 'out of fear of morality police'. According to experts and social activists, the Islamic Republic, by issuing such 'insulting and humiliating' rulings against women opposing mandatory hijab, aims to break the widespread and extensive 'civil disobedience' against mandatory dress in various cities of Iran. In this context, Mansoureh Hosseini Yeganeh, an activist in women's rights, also told the Persian section of Voice of America that with the destructive and harsh actions of the Islamic Republic against opponents and protesters, 'the dam of mandatory hijab has cracked.'