Cleric reopens scars of acid attacks after threatening Iranian women

Oct 13, 2020

“We must make the social environment unsafe for these people. … We can’t let them simply break the norms in streets and parks,” said Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabai-Nejad in reference to Iranian women who violate the Islamic Republic’s mandatory dress code known as hijab. Tabatabai-Nejad is the Friday prayer imam of the central city of Esfahan and a de facto local governor, as is the case with all Friday prayer leaders across Iran. He and his colleagues hold their mandates from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“We should have no fear in facing those norm breakers,” the cleric added, prompting widespread fears about a fresh wave of public violent attacks against women with loose headscarves. Back in 2014, the city of Esfahan was rocked with coordinated chain assaults by religious fundamentalists on motorbikes. The attackers splashed acid on the faces of their female victims, who were mostly caught off guard behind wheels. Of the 12 cases reported, only four ended up in formal lawsuits. And despite pressing demands from a shaken public for speedy trials, the Iranian judiciary declared the file closed four years later, bringing none of the perpetrators to justice.

The 2014 acid attacks came only after the same Friday prayer imam openly called for force against hijab violators. In a provocative speech, Tabatabai-Nejad said verbal advice would no longer work and time had come to “raise the sticks.”

Six years on, the cleric’s new threats appeared to have reinjected fresh fears among Iranian women. More strikingly, it reopened wounds that remain unhealed on the faces of the acid attack victims who shared traumatic accounts of their ordeals and their frustration over the justice that was never served.

“Back then, the city was shattered with horror. … The same story is happening again. I don’t feel well these days,” wrote Marzieh Ebrahimi, one of the acid attack survivors, still reeling from the tragic encounter and coping with the permanent scars. “It’s our right to be able to go out with no anxiety. … We are not detainees, we are citizens,” she added.