The Iranian Ministry of Education announced on Monday that educational centers will be able to stop offering services to students who do not comply with the laws that impose the use of the headscarfamid strong tensions over the use of this mandatory press in the Islamic country.

“All universities and higher education centers dependent on this Ministry of Education are exempt from providing educational and social services to the few students who do not comply with the rules and regulations of the universities,” the ministry said in a statement quoted by the Fars news agency.

The department stated that “the veil and chastity are an obligation” of the students, who must abide by the laws of the country. For its part, the Ministry of Health affirmed that the universities under its supervision will not serve students who do not cover themselves with a headscarf.

The announcement coincides with the restart of the school year after the two-week holiday of the Persian New Year, Nowruz. Many Iranian women have stopped wearing the mandatory Islamic veil as a form of protest and civil disobedience since the death in September of Mahsa Amini after being arrested precisely for wearing the hijab poorly.

The Amini’s death It provoked strong protests throughout the country calling for the end of the Islamic Republic, in which universities, institutes and even schools played an important role. In recent days, tensions have intensified over the lack of use of this garment, mandatory in the country since 1983, with calls from clerics and conservatives to impose the hijab.

On Friday a video went viral in which a man throws yogurt over the heads of two women for not wearing the veil. The Iranian Justice ordered the arrest of the two women for going without a veil and that of the attacker for “disturbing public order.”

In addition, the authorities are closing stores and businesses that serve women without the veil, in a measure aimed at imposing this garment again. state repression caused the death of about 500 people in the protests over the death of Amini, thousands were arrested and four protesters were hanged, one of them in public.