Rumors have started to spread that Iran's controversial "morality police" will be disbanded amid widespread protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of law enforcement.
In a statement on Sunday, Iranian Attorney-General Mohamed Jafar Montazeri said during a religious conference that the Gasht-e Ershad "had nothing to do with the judiciary and have been shut down."
Iran's Morality Police
The 22-year-old woman died on Sept. 16 after being arrested over accusations of breaking a 1983 law that requires women to wear a headscarf or commonly called a hijab. Following the incident, outrage across the nation ensued, with a growing number of women stopping wearing their hijabs.
On Sunday, the Iranian Interior Ministry said that more than 200 people, including security forces and civilians, have lost their lives during the widespread protests. Authorities estimated that the damage resulting from the demonstrations amounted to $40 million.
A group monitoring protests, Human Rights Activists in Iran, said that 470 protesters and 61 security personnel have died, noting that 18,000 people have been taken into custody, with at least seven sentenced to death, as per USA Today.
Following a meeting of top-level Iranian officials, lawyer Nezamoddin Mousavi said on Sunday that the country's administration and parliament insisted that paying attention to the public's demand which is mainly economic is the best way for achieving stability and addressing the protests.
Montazeri said on Saturday that the hijab law would be reviewed, adding that recommendations could come in about a week or two. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who had called for a crackdown on the hijab law in July, showed signs of retreat.
According to CNN, the attorney general was also quoted saying that the morality police had already been abolished, which sparked rumors to spread relatively quickly. However, the country's state media pushed back on those remarks, saying that the Interior Ministry oversees the force and not the judiciary.
Widespread Protests
Sparked by Amani's death, countless protests raged and have since coalesced around a range of grievances with the regime. Officials also unleashed a deadly crackdown on demonstrators as reports noted forced detentions and physical abuse being used to target Iran's Kurdish minority group.
Regarding the rumors of the morality police being disbanded, one Iranian woman said that it would not result in the protests stopping. She added that the country had no future with the current government continuing to hold power.
Another resident said that protesters do not care about hijabs anymore, adding that they have been going out without their headscarves for the past two months. They added that a revolution is what was occurring that started from the hijab and is calling for the dictator and a change to the regime.
Iran has many forms of the morality police that have been here since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. However, the latest version, formally known as the Gasht-e-Ershad, is the main agency that is responsible for enforcing Iran's Islamic code of conduct, beginning their patrols in 2006 over a dress code that required long clothes among women and banned shorts, ripped jeans, and others that were deemed immodest, BBC reported.
Related Article: North Korea Orders Parents To Give Children Patriotic Names Related to Weapons, Missiles
