The Iranian Parliament approved the application this Wednesday for a trial period of three years of a new law that toughens penalties for not wearing the Islamic veil. The Law to Support the Culture of Chastity and the Hijab was drafted by a small judicial and cultural commission behind closed doors in mid-August and the deputies voted this Wednesday in favor of its application for a trial period of three years. The Mizan agency has reported.

The motion was approved with 152 votes in favor, 34 against and seven abstentions of the total of 201 deputies present. The text must now be ratified by the Council of Guardians, a body made up of 12 members, six jurists and six clerics, which reviews the legislation adopted by Parliament and has the power to veto the chamber’s decisions.

The law seeks to end the lack of wearing the veil, a gesture of civil disobedience that many Iranians have adopted following the death of Mahsa Aminiafter being arrested by the Moral Police for not wearing the hijab properly in September 2022.

To this end, it establishes punishments for women who appear without a headscarf in public, such as fines of up to $2,000, prison sentences of up to five years, the confiscation of cars and a driving ban. It also contemplates salary deductionslabor benefits or the prohibition of accessing banking services.

The penalties do not only affect women who do not cover themselves. In addition, women and girls who show “nudity of any part of the body or wear clothing” in public spaces or on social networks will be punished. thin or tight clothing. It thus prohibits the use of torn pants, short sleeves or shorts, among others, and establishes the dismissal of workers who fail to comply with these rules.

“Gender apartheid”

UN experts have described the law as “a form of gender apartheidas the authorities appear to govern through systematic discrimination with the intention of subjugating women and girls.

The law has been approved just four days after the first anniversary of Amini’s death, which was celebrated amid enormous measures of security to avoid protests like those that shook the country last year, in which 500 people died.

Many Iranians They continue without wearing the veil despite a repression that resorts to confiscating cars, denying public services, closing businesses, punishments such as cleaning corpses or deploying patrols in July that warn women to cover themselves.