Aug. 15, 2024, 8:56 PM GMT+8 / Source: The Associated Press
By The Associated Press
On a darkened road beside the Caspian Sea, Iranian police officers opened fire last month on a 31-year-old woman who had tried to speed away likely knowing they wanted to seize her vehicle.

Police had been ordered to impound her car, activists say, because of an earlier violation of Iran’s headscarf law for showing her hair in public while driving.

Now unable to walk and confined to a bed at a police hospital, Arezou Badri — a mother of two — is the latest casualty of Iran’s renewed crackdown over headscarves, or hijabs. Her shooting occurred nearly two years after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while in police custody over an alleged headscarf violation, sparking nationwide protests over women’s rights and against the country’s theocracy.

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Amini’s death sparked months of protests and a security crackdown that killed more than 500 people and led to the detention of more than 22,000. After the mass demonstrations, police dialed down enforcement of hijab laws, but it ramped up again in April under what authorities called the Noor — or “Light” — Plan.

The hijab crackdown remains widely discussed in Iran, even as police and state media rarely report on it. Many women continue to wear their hijabs loosely or leave them draped around their shoulders while walking in Tehran. Women driving without wearing hijabs are believed to have been tracked via surveillance camera technology provided by Chinese firms, matching their faces against a government-maintained photo database, Ghaemi said.

If they are stopped, that can lead to physical altercations between women and the police.

Surveillance footage published last week by the Iranian reformist news website Ensaf showed a 14-year-old girl manhandled by the morality police in Tehran. Her mother described her daughter’s head as being rammed into an electrical box, a female officer pulling her hair and another putting their foot on her neck. Police described the officers’ behavior as unprofessional, but also accused the girl of using bad language.

“I saw my daughter with a wounded face, swollen lips, a bruised neck, torn clothes and she couldn’t even speak,” her mother, Maryam Abbasi, told the website. “Her eyes were so swollen from crying that they wouldn’t open.”