Iran targets e-commerce giant over photos of female employees without headscarves in new crackdown

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates –

Iranian authorities have shut down one of many places of work of the nation’s greatest e-commerce firm and launched judicial procedures after it printed footage on-line displaying feminine workers not sporting the necessary Islamic headband, semi-official media reported.

The transfer seems to be a part of a brand new marketing campaign launched final week to impose the Islamic gown code practically a yr after the morality police largely melted away within the face of widespread protests.

Digikala, informally often called “Iran’s Amazon,” seems to have run afoul of the principles by posting footage of a company gathering by which a number of feminine workers weren’t sporting the hijab.

The firm boasts greater than 40 million energetic month-to-month customers and hosts over 300,000 retailers. Iranians are largely lower off from worldwide retailers like Amazon due to western sanctions linked to the nation’s disputed nuclear program.

The web site of Iran’s Hamshahri day by day, which is affiliated with the municipality of the capital, Tehran, reported late Sunday that considered one of Digikala’s places of work had been sealed. It mentioned the web site was working usually.

The web site of Iran’s judiciary mentioned court docket circumstances had been filed in reference to the photographs, with out elaborating.

Nationwide protests erupted final fall after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died within the custody of the morality police. She seems to have been detained for violating the nation’s gown code, which requires that each women and men gown conservatively and that ladies cowl their hair in public.

The protests, by which girls performed a number one function, rapidly escalated into requires the overthrow of Iran’s theocracy, which took energy after the 1979 revolution. Authorities responded with a heavy crackdown by which greater than 500 protesters had been killed and practically 20,000 had been detained. The protests largely pale at the beginning of this yr however there are nonetheless widespread indicators of discontent.

After the protests started, the morality police largely vanished from the streets and many ladies — notably in Tehran and different cities — stopped sporting the hijab.

But officers insisted all through the disaster that the principles had by no means modified. Iran’s ruling clerics view the hijab as a key pillar of the Islamic Republic and take into account western-style gown to be an indication of decadence.

Last week, the morality police returned to the streets as officers introduced a brand new marketing campaign to power girls to put on the hijab.