Iranian woman who removed hijab sentenced to two years in jail

It’s International Woman’s Day, so here’s a report of a non-U.S. woman being the victim of draconian laws. The Foreign Desk and The Guardian both report that an unnamed Iranian woman has been sentenced to two years in prison for removing her hijab.  Hijabs, of course, have been mandatory since the theocracy began in 1979. At that time there were mass protests in the country by women opposing mandatory covering, but they didn’t work.

From the Guardian:

Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, who announced the sentence, did not give the woman’s identity but said she intended to appeal against the verdict, the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency reported.

Dolatabadi said the unidentified woman took off her headscarf in Tehran’s Enghelab Street to “encourage corruption through the removal of the hijab in public”.

The woman will be eligible for parole after three months, but Dolatabadi criticised what he said was a “light” sentence and said he would push for the full two-year penalty.

More than 30 Iranian women have been arrested since the end of December for publically removing their veils in defiance of the law.

. . . the zeal of the country’s morality police has declined in the past two decades, and a growing number of Iranian women in Tehran and other large cities often wear loose veils that reveal their hair.

In some areas of the capital, women are regularly seen driving cars with veils draped over their shoulders.

Dolatabadi said he would no longer accept such behaviour, and had ordered the impound of vehicles driven by socially rebellious women.

The prosecutor said some “tolerance” was possible when it came to women who wear the veil loosely, “but we must act with force against people who deliberately question the rules on the Islamic veil”, according to Mizan Online.

“Socially rebellious women,” indeed! That reminds me of the “nevertheless, she persisted” criticism of Elizabeth Warren made by Mitch McConnell in the Senate when Warren criticized the appointment of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. But wait, there’s more! From The Foreign Desk:

Separately, a woman arrested last month after being pushed off a concrete block by Iranian police while protesting the compulsory hijab has been released on bail after posting a bond of nearly 50 million tomans, equivalent to roughly $13,000.

Maryam Shariatmadari was pushed off a concrete block causing her to sustain reported injuries. She was held in Shahr-e Rey prison and denied medical attention, according to those familiar with her case.

But if that’s not enough, there’s still more!

In December, a campaign using a hashtag “White Wednesdays” and showing a video of a woman waving a white hijab with her hair loose, resulted in the arrest and subsequent disappearance of one woman, whose fate sparked interest from media and rights groups across the world.

Vida Movahed, a 31-year-old mother of a young child, was arrested December 27 by Iranian authorities after a video of her waving a white hijab on the streets of Tehran went viral ahead of larger protests in the country in the days that followed.

After international condemnation, Movahed was released in late January.

Here’s that video (click on screenshot):

At least the Guardian reported this flagrant violation of women’s rights. As for other left-wing and feminist sites like Jezebel, Feministing, HuffPo, The New York Times, or the Washington Post—nothing. The feminist sites extol the hijab and its wearers (as “heroes”) more often than they decry it. It’s International Women’s Day, and let’s remember that the world’s most oppressed women aren’t in America, the UK, or Western Europe (unless they’re Muslims).