Iran regime arrests women posing without headscarves online

TEHRAN - Iranian police have arrested eight people in a new crackdown on women who post images of themselves online without their hair covered, state media reported Monday, part of a larger cultural struggle in the Islamic Republic over the country's future.

The arrests are part of a wider crackdown on artists, poets, journalists, bloggers and activists.
The arrests and harsh sentences handed down signal that hard-liners in the police and judiciary, who were unable to stop the accord and fear looser social norms will weaken their power on the public.

State television said this latest operation, called Spider II, particularly targeted users of the Instagram picture-sharing application. Instagram, owned by Facebook, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
'We must fight with enemy's actions in this area,' Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi was quoted by the state-owned IRAN newspaper as saying. 'Of course our actions in this area will continue.'
In recent years, Iranian women in Tehran especially increasingly have worn the mandatory scarf loosely on their head, drawing the ire of conservatives in the Islamic Republic. Tehran police chief Gen. Hossein Sajedinia in April announced his department had deployed 7,000 male and female officers for a new plainclothes division - the largest such undercover assignment in memory - to enforce the government-mandated Islamic dress code.
The crackdown is just the latest move by authorities to control online expression in Iran. Nearly 40 percent of Iran's 80 million people can access the Internet, though the U.S.-based watchdog Freedom House describes web access as 'not free' in the Islamic Republic due to censorship and filtering.
In May 2014, authorities arrested a group of young Iranian men and women for an online video of them dancing to Pharrell Williams' song 'Happy.' While the arrests drew widespread criticism, including from the musician himself, those involved each received suspended sentences of six months in jail and 91 lashes.
Meanwhile, journalists, filmmakers, writers and activists also have been detained, sentenced or imprisoned.

Source: AP, May 16, 2016