four Iranian women recount the frequent arrests of the morality police

“Woman! Life! Freedom!” This slogan imposed itself on the placards of demonstrators in Iran, then around the world, after the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police in Tehran, on September 16. Arrested while she was walking with her family, the 22-year-old student had been loaded into a van from the Gasht-e Ershadthe daily police who control the dress and behavior of Iranians – and especially Iranian women – in public space. A vice police whose violent behavior is regularly documented and denounced by activists and NGOs, as Amnesty International reported in 2019.

Mahsa Amini’s death has set Iranian society ablaze, leading many women to burn their veils and walk out into the streets with their heads uncovered. Everywhere, the same cry from the heart resounds: “It could have been me!” Because these arrests are so frequent in Iran that they poison the lives of women, as told to franceinfo Laleh *, Parisa, Roxane * and Panthea, four Iranian women now settled in France.

Laleh*, 36: “They arrested us as if we were criminals”

A deep sense of injustice. This is what Laleh*, a 36-year-old Iranian living in France, still feels after her arrest by the morality police in Mashhad, in eastern Iran, when she was just 19 years old. “I was shopping with a classmate from university when two policewomen, women in chadors, approached us”, she says. In question: their makeup, strands of hair sticking out and a mantle (a shawl covering the body, inspired by the French word) deemed too short. “We refused to follow them, so they trapped us in a shopping center with other police officers, men this time”continues Laleh.

According to his account, the tone rises and the two comrades are assaulted before being pushed into police vehicles. “My manto tore, I had no more veil. I was screaming and crying”, recalls Laleh. “They arrested us as if we were criminals”, she fumes again. The young woman says she was taken to detention, where the police threatened her. Without glasses, dressed in a chador put on by force, the student describes long hours of terror, before being judged the next morning and condemned with her friend to a fine.

“My dad wouldn’t believe me. He thought I was arrested for drugs, for going to a party, but not for a hijab.”

Laleh, Iranian teacher

at franceinfo

“I told the judge that we shouldn’t be treated that way, that we were studentsrecalls Laleh. He replied that he also judges university professors and that even they end up kissing his hand. He had all the powers.” Finally freed, the two friends come out of detention as furious as they are shocked. “For years, I had nightmares about it. Before that, I was full of life, I read a lot… I didn’t understand how they could treat me like that”remembers the one who became a teacher of Persian and French.

Parisa, 34: “Every day, we try to escape them”

When she delves into the memories of her arrest in 2013, Parisa struggles to hold back her anger and her tears. “It happened in the last days of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s term of office. [président iranien de 2005 à 2013]. The climate was very tense, the police were on every street corner in Tehran”, recalls the 34-year-old freelance journalist. Returning from work, Parisa is arrested by a police patrol. Gasht-e Ershadposted on a major thoroughfare in the capital. “I couldn’t resist, my heart was beating very hard. I felt like I had made a huge mistake, as if I had prostituted myself”, she confides in tears on the phone. Again, her outfit, which she nevertheless describes as loose and including a veil, is pointed out by the agents. “I really think they have quotas to keep, Advance Parisa, they can arrest you for anything.”

Along with six other women of her age, the Iranian woman recounts being driven in a van to the headquarters of the morality police, which everyone refers to as “Vozara”. “This is where Mahsa [Amini] was taken to die there”, says Parisa. The place is gloomy, crowded. “There were maybe a hundred other women, she remembers. There, we were insulted, denigrated, photographed with a sign on which appeared a number. Deprived of her phone, Parisa worries above all for her parents, probably worried about not seeing their daughter return to the family home.

“They impress us so that when they come out, women no longer dare to put on short clothes or wear the veil in a certain way.”

Parisa, Iranian journalist

at franceinfo

After several hours, Parisa claims to have been released but her life is turned upside down. “I was even more suspicious when I went out, and I’m not the only one”, she says. In the streets of Tehran, the young woman is constantly looking for the white vans with the green border of the Gasht-e Ershad. Often, passers-by warn each other of the presence of a patrol at the next intersection. “We take the bus, the taxi, it’s like a game of hide and seek, she describes. Every day, we try to escape them.” Later, when his sister is in turn arrested, the wound reopens. “She had the misfortune to resist, which makes the police more violent and prolongs the detention. We were very worried, she relates. They eventually freed her, ordering her to write some sort of memoir on the philosophy of the veil.”

Panthea, 36: “It’s happened to me seven or eight times, but it’s still so scary”

“I know few women who have not had to deal with the Gasht-e Ershad”, ensures Panthea, Iranian artist who has lived between France and Iran for several years. This young mother remembers feeling the oppression from her early teens. “It’s the age at which girls start to have curves, want to wear makeup. I cut my hair very short and I took a boy’s name. I just wanted to be a boy, and be free”she recalls.

Around the age of 17, as she crosses the street in the Shahr theater district of Tehran, Panthea feels a hand grabbing her from behind. A woman in a chador, “not really violent” invites him to follow her without making a fuss. She is introduced to a police officer, who spins her around to criticize her outfit. “He asked me if I was a tourist to be dressed like that, with pants he thought were too short, she relates. Twenty years later, I still remember his terrible look. Like the other women arrested, Panthea says she was taken by van to Vozara, from where she could only leave with more covering clothes.

“We lose a lot of time (in detention). We can miss an exam, an interview, have a dependent person… But they don’t care.”

Panthea, Iranian artist

at franceinfo

“Over there, the body search is very humiliating. We are told that we can lose our job, be kicked out of school. They try to tire us, provoke us, so that we get into their game”, describes Panthea. She insists on the frequency of these arrests. “It’s happened to me seven or eight times, but it’s still so scary. Each time, I didn’t get out of there before 8 or 10 p.m. Panthea also denounces the opportunism of the morality police, who, according to her, were able to claim “sexual favors” in exchange for early release. After having suffered such blackmail, the young woman wanted to file a complaint, but finally resigned herself because it risked “to play against” from his family.

Roxane, 30: “I’m still talking to my psychologist about it”

The death of Mahsa Amini has revived dark memories for Roxane*, an Iranian researcher in her thirties. In July 2012, on the first day of Ramadan, the young woman noted a large police presence in Tehran. On the way to her place of work, around 4 p.m., she recounts having been grabbed by an agent armed with a truncheon accompanied by two women in chadors. “They asked me to follow them, she says. However, I wore sandals, jeans, a tunic and a scarf. I was not made up or very little”almost justifies the researcher.

Very impressed, Roxane describes a trip “endless” in the van, whose passengers readjust their veils and remove their make-up hastily before arriving at the detention center. “They were used to it, not me”, she points out. On the road, she describes a striking scene: police try to arrest a young woman who is struggling and then receives blows. “At that time, I had a panic attack, nervous asthma”, remembers Roxane, whose condition is considered serious enough for her to get out of the vehicle.

“The three days that followed, I did not leave the house. As soon as I heard the sound of horns, I jumped.”

Roxane, Iranian researcher

at franceinfo

Roxane has never seen the detention center, but retains the trauma of this encounter. “Ten years later, it’s still in me. I still talk to my psychologist about it”, she says. And if the arrests are not always physically violent, they serve, according to Roxane, to limit the actions of Iranian men and women. The morality police “is there to dominate us and interfere with our lives”, she summarizes. “Originally, the wearing of the veil was not problematic, Mahsa Amini was not problematic, but the discourse of the State is to describe women as impure… And that they must be controlled .”

*At the request of the interested parties, the first names followed by an asterisk have been modified.