A member of Iran's parliament has told local media that the government plans to impose new punishments on women who do not wear a hijab in public, and that people who refuse to comply after two warnings are likely to have their bank accounts frozen.
Hossein Jalali, member of the Cultural Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, saying Iranian media on December 6 reported that โunveiled peopleโ would be sent an SMS urging them to abide by the law and wear a hijab before entering a โwarning phaseโ and ultimately having their bank account frozen.
"In the third stage, the bank account of the revealed person may be frozen."
Similar actions taken by governments in the past have seen protesters and dissidents turn to cryptocurrencies to continue accessing financial instruments.
Jalali did not elaborate on what the "warning stage" entailed, suggested there should be no "morality police" enforcing the law, and other key figures have pointed out that the cameras can be used in combination with artificial intelligence to identify to criminals.
Ongoing protests have occurred in Iran since September 17, when an Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested by the moral police for not wearing a hijab and died under suspicious circumstances at a hospital in Tehran.
Many women are now setting their hijab on fire or refusing to wear it amid a broader push to force the government to back down from its mandatory hijab requirements.
The threat to freeze protesters' bank accounts parallels events in Canada earlier this year, where the country's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on February 15, allowing regulators to freeze bank accounts of members participating in the "Freedom Convoy" protests
Some protesters in the convoy turned to cryptocurrency as a way to finance the movement after fundraising platform GoFundMe removed the campaign from its website.
Iran, which has been use of cryptography in international trade agreements since August 9, it has been developing its own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) called the crypto rial.
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The threat by Iranian officials to freeze bank accounts to enforce compliance again highlights the risks of CBDCs and the transition to cashless economies. Nigerian December 6 ATM withdrawals prohibited of more than $45 per day in an attempt to force the population to use its unpopular CBDC. Decentralized cryptocurrency transactions, by contrast, are similar to cash in that they cannot be censored by government officials.
The CBDC critic and host of the popular YouTube channel Wall Street Silver noted in a December 6 tweet that governments having absolute power over your money is a scary idea.
Sounds like another revolution in the making.
Imagine a government that has a CBDC and the ability to wipe out your money if you don't behave. pic.twitter.com/75ZN5hAZCr
โ Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) December 6, 2022
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