A treatment clinic will be opened in Iran for women who defy the mandatory hijab laws, according to which women are required to cover their heads in public. The opening of the “hijab removal treatment clinic” was announced by Mehri Talebi Darestani, the head of the Women and Family Department of the Tehran Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which falls under the direct authority of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
According to The Guardian, Darestani said the clinic will offer “scientific and psychological treatment for hijab removal”.
Several human rights groups and Iranian women have expressed anger at this announcement.
As per the report, Iranian human rights lawyer, Hossein Raeesi said that it was “neither Islamic and nor is it aligned with Iranian law” to have a clinic to treat women who didn’t comply with the hijab laws.
This news comes after a female student stripped to her underwear at an Iranian university likely protesting against the dress code earlier this month. A video posted on social media showed the woman being detained by security guards at a branch of the Islamic Azad University. Spokesperson of the university, Amir Mahjob said on X that at the police station, they found out that the woman was “under severe mental pressure and had a mental disorder”. However, many social media users believe the woman’s action was deliberate.
Later, a government spokesperson, Fatemeh Mohajerani, said that the woman is a “troubled individual” and is receiving treatment.
According to The Guardian, the news about the clinic has spread to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest groups and female students, sparking fear and defiance.
Meanwhile, a woman told The Guardian that, the new establishment wouldn’t be a clinic, but a prison. She said that they are struggling to make ends meet and power outages, but “a piece of cloth is what this state is worried about.”
“If there was a time for all of us to come back to the streets, it’s now or they’ll lock us all up”, she added.
Iranian women led a mass protest which lasted for days, after a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini died in hospital after being in a coma for three days. She was arrested by morality police, who accused her of breaking the law requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab, or headscarf, and their arms and legs with loose clothing. She fell into a coma shortly after collapsing at a detention centre. The police hit Amini on the head with a baton and banged her head against one of their vehicles.
