‘Sacred Games’ Actor Strips In Protest Against Iran “Morality Police”
Elnaaz Norouzi, the Iranian born actor known for her work in the Netflix series Sacred Games, has joined the massive protest by women against Iran’s “morality police” by asserting their right to wear anything they want.
Ms Norouzi in a video posted on her Instagram account joined the protest by stripping several layers of clothes to make a point about what she wants to wear and no one can stop her.
“Every woman, anywhere in the world, regardless of where she is from, should have the right to wear whatever she desires and when or wherever she desires to wear it. No man nor any other woman has the right to judge her or ask her to dress otherwise,” Ms Norouzi wrote in the Instagram post.
“Everyone has different views and beliefs and they have to be respected. Democracy means the power to decide…Every Woman should have the power to decide over her own body. I am not promoting nudity, I am promoting freedom of choice,” she wrote.
Before she started a career in acting, Ms Norouzi had been working for more than 10 years as an international model for brands like Dior, Lacoste and Le Coq Sportive, to name a few.
She was trained in Persian traditional dance. In India, she has been learning the Kathak dance.
For over a decade, Iranian women who have ventured outdoors, even for a simple errand, have done so with the fear of running foul of the notorious morality police.
Those found in breach of the Islamic republic’s strict dress code face being hauled into one of the vice units’ green-and-white vans for a lecture on how to wear their headscarf, or a brutal beating.
Many Iranian woman have faced far worse. One of them was Mahsa Amini, 22, who was picked up by the morality police in Tehran on September 16 and declared dead three days later.
Her death — which activists say was caused by a blow to the head, and authorities blame on a pre-existing medical condition — has set off a wave of protests in which women have burnt their hijab headscarves.