Iranian officials have announced the launch of new social media channels on Instagram and Iran’s regime-controlled messaging services for the Iranian public to report each other’s “immoral” conduct to the Guidance Prosecutor.
The Revolutionary Guards Quds Force-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported 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 includes:
• 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 and to use the capacity of citizens” to help crack down on civil liberties, privacy, and basic rights in the capital.
This ongoing crackdown and its dangerous use of force, designed to intimidate the Iranian people into submission, has been met with severe criticism and so Iranian law and police officials have come forward in recent months to defend the police’s brutal suppression.
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”.
However, it is unlikely that ordinary Iranians would ever begin to help the regime by ratting out their fellow citizens for these ridiculous so-called crimes. The Iranian people hate the morality police, as much as they hate the Revolutionary Guards and the rest of the mullahs.
In fact, the Iranian people are far more likely to film the so-called morality police abusing members of the public for supposed morality crimes rather than that other way around, as proven by the recent viral video of the teenage girl being violently arrested for having a water gun fight with her friends in a park during the summer heat.
