While Iranian Women Are Routinely Flogged for Not Wearing the Hijab, UN Rights Office Laments Swiss Ban on Muslim Face-Coverings

The Revolutionary Guards Quds Force-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported [This article was originally published on June 8, 2019] that the head of the Tehran’s Guidance Prosecutor’s Office, Mohammad Mehdi Haj Mohammadi, has instructed ordinary Iranians to spy on their fellow citizens by taking photos, videos, and gathering other information about people committing what the regime says are “immoral” actions.

These immoral actions that the so-called “Guidance Court” channel has asked citizens to report include:

• any kind of non-observance of the forced hijab, whether that be refusing to wear it or allowing it to show some hair

• any acts that break the norms in automobiles, which is thought to be because many Iranians consider their cars to be private places, where one could remove the hijab for instance, but the regime considers them to be public because people can see inside from a public space

• alcohol use

• holding mixed gender parties in places such as traditional restaurants, cafés, shopping centres, and gardens

• posting “immoral” content on social media

Mohammadi said that this new launch was designed “to speed up the process of dealing with norm breakers.

Tehran’s Chief of Police has previously vowed to “robustly” crack down on “improper veiling” and other social liberties, while the Iranian regime’s Attorney General defended the police for its suppression of “social abnormalities”. Click here to read the full article.

UN rights office laments Swiss ban on Muslim face-coverings

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. human rights office expressed dismay on Tuesday that Switzerland is set to join a few other countries where “actively discriminating against Muslim women” is legal, after Swiss voters approved a ban on face coverings like burqas and niqabs that some Muslim women wear.

In a referendum on Sunday, Swiss voters narrowly approved a measure to ban the wearing of full-face-covering burqas and niqabs, which have slits for the eyes, in addition to ski masks and bandannas worn by some protesters.

The move will outlaw covering one’s face in public places, with some exceptions — including for health reasons like wearing masks to help prevent the spread COVID-19. Authorities now have two years to draw up detailed legislation.

Ravina Shamdasani, a rights office spokeswoman, acknowledged it was a “divisive issue” and said women shouldn't be forced to cover their faces, but “the use of the law to dictate what women should wear is problematic from a human rights perspective.”

“The legal ban on face coverings will unduly restrict women’s freedom to manifest their religion or beliefs and has a broader impact on their human rights,” she told reporters at a regular U.N. briefing in the Swiss city of Geneva.

She said the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a landmark human rights agreement, allows some limits on such freedom to protect public safety, health, order and morals, among other things, but that “vague justifications” about how face coverings are a threat were not legitimate.

The Swiss government had opposed the referendum proposal, calling full-face coverings a “marginal phenomenon.” Experts estimate that at most a few dozen Muslim women wear them in the country of 8.5 million people. Burqas and niqabs are far more common in places like Persian Gulf countries or Afghanistan.

Source: NCRI, Hamideh Taati, June 8, 2019. The Associated Press, Staff, March 10, 2021

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