The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for violating the dress code sparked widespread protests
Tehran:
An Iranian bank manager who served an unveiled woman has been fired, local media reported Sunday, after demonstrations provoked by the mandatory head covering rule rocked the Islamic republic.
Women in the country of more than 80 million people are required to cover their heads, necks and hair, a law enforced by the country’s morality police.
The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody on September 16 for allegedly violating the dress code sparked nationwide demonstrations that authorities are calling “riots”.
Mehr news agency reported that the bank manager in Qom province, near the capital Tehran, “provided banking services to an unveiled woman on Thursday”.
As a result, he was “relieved from his position by order of the governor,” Mehr quoted Deputy Governor Ahmad Hajizadeh as saying.
Mehr said the video of the woman unveiled “provoked a lot of reaction on social media”.
In Iran, most banks are state-controlled and Hajizadeh said it is the responsibility of managers in such institutions to implement the hijab law.
Dozens of people, mostly protesters but also members of the security forces, have been killed in the demonstrations, which Iran says were encouraged by its Western “enemies”.
The hijab became mandatory four years after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy and established the Islamic Republic.
Later, with changing dress standards, it became common to see women in tight jeans and loose, colorful headscarves.
But in July this year, ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi called for the mobilization of “all state institutions to enforce the headscarf law”.
However, many women continued to bend the rules.
(This story has not been edited by NewsMadura staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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