MADRID Dec. 18 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Iran’s Parliament has demanded to amend the bill that contemplates tougher punishments for violations of the dress code, about two weeks after the president, Masud Pezeshkian, expressed his doubts about the relevance of approving this legislation.
The Vice President for Parliamentary Affairs, Shahram Dabiri, has confirmed that the Government has asked the Higher National Security Council not to send the text for final approval for now after the President of Parliament has submitted a request to introduce modifications to the text.
“We have asked that the law on chastity and hijab not be presented to the Government so that a decision can be made on its future,” he said, before delving into the fact that a review will be carried out “at the appropriate time”, according to what he stated. Iranian news agency Mehr.
The draft Law to Support the Family through the Promotion of the Culture of Chastity and the Hijab had already been approved by Parliament in September 2023, although it has not yet been sent to the Government for ratification, in amid criticism of the tightening of measures against women who fail to comply with the dress code.
Likewise, it has received the green light from the Guardian Council, which has the power to veto the legislation and, although it was scheduled to be delivered to Pezeshkian for ratification at the beginning of the month, the process has not moved forward and could lead to a future review of the project.
Pezeshkian stated in early December that he had “numerous reservations” about the bill and added that “there are doubts and ambiguities” around the text, after the massive mobilizations following the death in custody in 2022 of Mahsa Amini, detained for allegedly wearing the veil wrong.
Thus, he explained that “by trying to fix something, many other things can be damaged with this intervention” and maintained that there have been “many discussions” around the application of the law and he opted to continue with the “conversations” to “preserve the principles and religious values without doing anything that alters the consensus and generates discontent within society.
The Iranian president, with a reformist tendency, advocated during his electoral campaign to remove the ‘Moral Police’ from the streets and defended the need to address the dress code from a more open point of view, after criticizing the actions of the security forces after Amini’s death.
The death of the young woman, a member of the Kurdish minority, unleashed a wave of nationwide demonstrations that left nearly 500 dead, according to non-governmental organizations, while courts have sentenced several people to death for their role in the protests. some of which have already been executed.
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