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Iran: Stop Prosecuting Women Over Dress Code

Human Rights Watch Beirut, February 24, 2018 – Iranian authorities should drop charges and stop prosecuting women for peacefully protesting Iran’s compulsory dress code (hijab) laws, Human Rights Watch said today. At least three women who peacefully protested the hijab law have been arrested since the end of January 2018.
 
Iranian officials arrested Nargess Hosseini on January 29 for protesting compulsory hijab. They arrested Azam Jangravi on February 14 and Shaparak Shajarizadeh on February 21 in similar circumstances. Sources told Human Rights Watch that Hosseini and Jangravi were released on bail, but Shajarizadeh remains in detention.
 
“For decades Iranian authorities have imposed a compulsory dress code on women violating their basic freedom to express themselves and restricting access to economic and social opportunities for anyone who refuses,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Now when women are peacefully protesting a discriminatory dress code, authorities are adding to their misdeeds by arresting them.”
 
The most recent wave of protests against compulsory hijab began on December 27, 2017.
 
On February 22, a video was published on Twitter that showed a police officer violently pushing a woman who is not wearing a head scarf off a utility box where she was peacefully protesting. Jangravi has also reportedly been released and is awaiting trial.
 
 
Hosseini and Jangravi, have stated in media interviews or social media posts that they independently decided to engage in peaceful protest to challenge Iran’s compulsory hijab laws.
 
Iran has a long history of imposing rules about what women can and cannot wear, violating their fundamental rights. In the 1930s, the then-ruler, Reza Shah, prohibited women from wearing the hijab, and police were ordered to forcibly remove headscarves from women wearing them. Following the Iranian revolution in 1979, in the early 1980s, Iranian authorities imposed a mandatory dress code requiring all women to wear the hijab.
 
In May 2017, Human Rights Watch documented many instances in which women were discriminated against when they applied for a job or in the workplace, based on their choice of apparel.
 
The enforcement of a compulsory dress code on women in Iran violates their rights to private life, personal autonomy, and freedom of expression, as well as to freedom of religion, thought, and conscience, Human Rights Watch said. It is also a form of gender-based discrimination prohibited under international law.
 
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Iran has ratified, guarantees people’s right to freedom of expression, to privacy, and to freedom of religion. Several United Nations independent experts have criticized rules that require wearing religious dress in public. The late Asma Jahangir, the former UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, had said that the “use of coercive methods and sanctions applied to individuals who do not wish to wear religious dress or a specific symbol seen as sanctioned by religion” indicates “legislative and administrative actions which typically are incompatible with international human rights laws.”
 

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