Baku, Azerbaijan, April 20
By Farhad Daneshvar – Trend:
A group of high-ranking Iranian officials have sharply criticized police after a video went viral, showing a woman being violently attacked for failing to observe “proper Islamic dress code” by Iran’s morality police.
The social media footage shows the woman being beaten by morality police in a park in Iran because her head scarf was deemed to be 'insufficient' for covering up.
MP Mohammadreza Aref who leads the Omid (Hope) reformist faction in parliament described the police behavior as “disruptive”, and said the footage indicates the fact that religious and security organizations, which claim they are committed to advising and guiding people, still have not realized the need to alter cultural behaviors and they still seek to inflict violence on people.
“This type of behavior is displayed by those individuals who have not received the required training in this regard and they themselves need to be advised,” Aref wrote on his channel on Telegram.
Masoumeh Ebtekar, Iran’s vice-president for women’s affairs, harshly criticized the police over its treatment towards the woman.
“How this behavior is justified? How an officer should behave in case of suffering an insult? I strongly condemn this behavior and will follow on it. No one deserves such violent and unreligious behavior,” Ebtekar wrote on Twitter.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s special assistant for citizens’ rights affairs, Shahindokht Molaverdi, called for changing the approach of police and other cultural institutions toward the issue of Islamic dress code.
MP Parvaneh Mafi criticized the decision on setting up morality police and questioned the need for morality police.
“The video footage show the fact that it is time for the police chief to transparently explain how forming the morality police benefited the society,” she wrote.
The spokesperson of the law enforcement forces has described the behavior as “unacceptable” saying that the officials are currently probing into the incident and will brief public once a fact is find out.