Iran Keeps Airing Forced Confessions To Threaten Anti-Hijab Campaigners

Iranian state media affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards are publishing forced video confessions from women who are arrested over their participation in an ongoing anti-hijab campaign. 

Fars news website, with close links to the IRGC, published a video this week of a woman, identified as Elham Farshad, who confessed that she was angry, and insulted a clergyman who was admonishing her over her hijab. In the video she was remorseful and expressed regret. 

According to information obtained by Iran International, agents of the Intelligence Ministry arrested Farshad at his home on July 13, and transferred her to the Ward 209 of Evin Prison, a detention center controlled by the ministry. After ten days, she was released from prison with a bail of 5 billion rials (about $17,000), after they filmed her confessing to wrongdoing under duress. 

An informed source told Iran International that the woman who was forced to confess in the video was not Rashno and that the video is the confessions of another woman on the bus who got into a fight with the hijab enforcer and got her hand injured.

Iran’s security organs have also started arresting women who participated in a nationwide civil disobedience campaign against hijab on July 12 and sent videos to US-based women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad.

Following a call by women’s rights activists for civil disobedience with the hashtag of ‘No2Hijab’ social media exploded with dozens of videos and photos of women unveiling in public.

In the past few weeks, the government has increased harassment of women for their insufficient hijab and many have been detained by special police patrols.

Iran’s Supreme Leader claimed Wednesday that the anti-hijab movement is nothing but a Western plot, much like his depiction of all problems as plots by enemies.