But the crackdown has entered a new phase, activists said. They reported that the creepy white vans of the “morality police” have returned to Iran’s city squares, rounding up women believed to have violated the mandatory hijab rule that has been in place since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Metropolitan Police Chief Abbas Ali Mohammadian publicly announced the latest crackdown on April 13, with local media saying she was codenamed Noor (“light” in Persian). Multiple videos posted on social media under the hashtag “jang aliyeh zanan” (“war on women”) showed women being herded into vans by male police officers in bulletproof vests, accompanied by female police officers wearing Islamic chadors.
Streets turned into a battlefield
“The Islamic Republic has turned the streets into a battlefield against women and youth,” writes the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and imprisoned human rights defender Narges Mohammadi in a message from Evin Prison in Tehran. Her comment was posted by her supporters on social media. In one video, shot near the Tajrish metro station in northern Tehran, a woman falls to the ground after being detained by police, telling bystanders who then try to revive her that her phone has been confiscated. In another, what appears to be the sound of an electric shock can be heard being used by police against women who were crammed into a van.
“Amid growing dissent at home and international attention focused on regional tensions, the Islamic Republic is seizing the opportunity to step up its crackdown on dissent,” said Hadi Ghaemi, director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran. “Without a firm international response, the Islamic Republic will be encouraged to
has intensified its violence against women and its gross violations of human rights,” Ghaemi added.
Hundreds have been killed, according to rights groups, and thousands arrested, according to the United Nations, in the crackdown on the 2022 protests, which represent one of the Islamic Republic’s biggest challenges.
Ability to tighten the grip
Among those arrested in recent days was Aida Shahkarami, the sister of Nika Shahkarami, 16, who died during the crackdown in 2022, her mother Nasreen wrote on social media. Aida was detained “because she was not wearing the obligatory hijab,” Nasrin Shahkarami wrote on social media. Nika Shahkarami was found dead during the protests, with some family members accusing security forces of killing her.
Dina Ghalibaf, a journalist and student at Tehran University, was arrested after she accused security forces on social media of handcuffing and raping her during a previous arrest at a metro station, according to Norway-based rights group Hengaw.
Executions, which activists say are used by Tehran as a tool to instill fear in the public, are also on the rise. At least 110 people were executed this year alone, according to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Group (IHR). Among those executed in recent days were a married couple, Esmail Hassaniani, 29, and his wife Marjan Hadjizadeh, 19, who were sentenced to death on drug-related charges and hanged at Zanjan Central Prison on April 11. “The regime will undoubtedly use this opportunity to tighten its grip inside the country,” said IHR director Mahmoud Amiri-Moghadam. “They have not yet been able to take the control they had before September 2022. They may have an opportunity to do so now if all the international attention turns to the escalating tensions with Israel,” Amiri-Moghadam believes.
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