Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: After lying low for a few months, Iran is punishing anti-Hijab women activists with psychiatric treatment, cleaning of morgues, and other means, the media reported.
A court in Tehran province sentenced a woman to spend a month cleaning corpses in a morgue when she was caught driving without a hijab.
Iran’s government is now regularly pushing women without hijabs for counseling with psychiatrists as healthcare organizations warned that the country’s judiciary is using mental medicine for this purpose, France 24 reported.
Despite this crackdown, women are defying the anti-Hijab laws. Iranian actress Afsaneh Bayegan repeatedly posted photos of her unveiled hair on Instagram and recently attended a public ceremony without a hijab.
Afsaneh Bayegan, 61, was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence and told to go to a “psychological center” once a week to “treat her anti-family personality disorder”, the reports said.
“The sentence that she was handed sets an example,” Azadeh Kian, an Iran specialist, and Professor of Political Science at Université Paris Cité, explained after many women in the country chose to give up wearing the hijab since the custodial death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022.
She was detained by Iran’s morality police for “improperly” wearing her headscarf. Her custodial death triggered nationwide protests as women publicly cut their hair and burned veils for weeks.
Other Iranian celebrities, athletes, and actresses have followed suit in solidarity.
Iranian judges recently “diagnosed” another actress, Azadeh Samadi, with an “antisocial personality disorder” after she wore a hat instead of a hijab at a funeral. She will also have to seek therapy weekly in a “psychological center”, the court ruled.
In an open letter to the head of Iran’s judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, the President of four mental health organizations in Iran, accused authorities of “exploiting psychiatry” for other purposes.
“Diagnosing mental health disorders is the responsibility of psychiatrists, not judges,” the letter read.
But Iranian officials are imposing hefty fines, sending text messages if women are spotted driving without a hijab, confiscating vehicles, and even pressuring employers to get women fired, the reports said.
Women not wearing a hijab have even been refused hospital treatment as well and shops catering to them have been forced to shut down, France 24 reported.