Moral police under pressure in Iran

The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a young woman from north-west Iran’s Kurdistan province, who was on a visit to Tehran with her family, has sparked widespread anger.

Amini, who was hauled up by the infamous moral police for violating the dress code, imposed by the rigid regime, slipped into a coma and died on Friday. The high-handedness of the moral police has been in evidence in numerous cases. But it is the protest that broke out on the streets and on the front pages of the media that has shamed the government and the moral police themselves. The Iranian police described it as an “unfortunate incident,” which should not be allowed to happen again. With his back to the wall, Greater Tehran Police Commander Hossein Rahimi said, “Cowardly accusations have been levelled against the Iranian police. We will wait until the day of judgement, but we cannot stop doing security work.” The hashtag of Mahsa Amini reached 1.61 million mentions in the Persian-language Twitter. The anger was widespread among the people, especially among young people.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi rang up the family of Mahsa Amini, and told them he would follow up the case, and said “your daughter is like my own daughter and I feel like this incident happened to one of my own relatives.” There is a strong feeling in the government and among the police that the mistake was of the authorities. The reason that the moral police and the government are feeling apologetic because they know Mahsa Amini was a conservative girl, and she had no intention of breaking the dress code and was not the kind to violate the law. If a conservative person who believes in the dress code dies in police custody, then the police force and the authorities are caught on the wrong foot.

The young people were angry, and the reformist media as it exists in Iran expressed their anger and protest. Reformist publication Etemad said, “The people are shocked and outraged by what happened to Mahsa Amini” and there have been many instances of “violence by the morality police.” The Jomhouri-e-Islami said that the “violent behaviour” of the moral police could lead to “social fragmentation.” The conservative media accused the reformists of exploiting the incident. A government newspaper said the reformists were “exploiting public sentiments by using an unfortunate incident to incite the nation against the government and the president.” But the official media was not able to hush up the death of Mahsa Amini and it could not hide the misdeed of the moral police.

Iran presents a strange paradox of clash of opinions in an authoritative image, where the trappings of democracy are conspicuously present, but it is the conservative Guardians Council that has the final say in the matter. But on the ground, in the street, on the campus, the rebellious spirit of the youth lives on and the hardliners have a stranglehold on the system. But the free spirit of the people at large has not been silenced. The rebellious spirit of the youth remains undimmed and untrammelled. The Iranian leaders for inexplicable reasons allow room for dissidents and protesters to let the people vent their anger even as the government keeps its control over the masses. The political system admits of a limited exercise of freedom while maintaining its authoritarian structure and intent.

It looks like most Iranians have accepted the trade-off between the freedom to protest and the rigid framework, which remains intact. So once in a while as in the case of Mahsa Amini the silences are broken, and the uneasy truce between the people and their rulers is suspended.