Basij morality police - Acid attacking foot soldiers of the Iranian regime

None of nature’s most vicious have an instinct for barbarism and cruelty like that of the Iranian Basij - Basij Mostazafan (mobilisation of the oppressed) – the foot soldiers of the Iranian regime.

Acting out the role of morality police, they prowl the streets of Iran enforcing a code of conduct, mercilessly hunting down any women who disobey the rules on decency set down by the country’s leading clerics, attacking those who do in the most horrendous way.

In response to women breaking these laws, which have been enforced in Iran since the 1979 revolution, whether a women is inappropriately veiled and not wearing long loose fitting clothes such as a chador in public, or is seen to be wearing lipstick, or it is just a case of a young teenage girl seen to be “fraternizing” with a lad in public, such violations are all classed by the Iranian regime’s hardliners as a sin in the spirit, or committing “indecent” behavior.

So for the unfortunate women, caught contravening these draconian laws, they will either end up having acid thrown in their face by a member of the morality squad, or they will be mercilessly beaten with clubs in a show of instant justice, and in some cases, the attackers themselves are women.

While many who break these morality laws end up in prison, others are often tortured, gang-raped by the guards, or those that are unlucky enough, end up facing the hangman’s noose. Also, it matters not the age of the victim, from teenager to elderly women; all are likely to suffer from the barbaric act of an acid attack.

Over the years, the excessive cruelty of the Iranian regime surpasses that of a mediaeval baron, their draconian laws have cracked down hard on the poor and the weak, using tools of violence to keep all of their citizens from breaking the stringent rules set down by the founder of the Iranian Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose tyrannical ideology forms the cornerstone of all governments past, present and future.

Where acid attacks are concerned, the Basij morality squads often use the speed of a motorcycle to approach their quarry, and seeming to have appeared from nowhere, they swoop up to their unsuspecting victim.

Then with their bike screeching to a halt, the pillion passenger leaps from the machine, and tosses the deadly acid into the face of the startled women.

Following the attack, as the hapless women screams in agony, the instigators escape as fast as they had arrived. Meanwhile, the corrosive liquid eats into the victim’s skin, melting away the flesh to cause horrific injuries.

The type of injuries concerned truly are life changing, if not life threatening, as acid can burn to the bone, and should it penetrate the eyes, sulphuric acid can literally melt them, with any blindness being permanent.

Psychological injuries

But not only are there physical injuries, there are also psychological injuries through having to deal with such attacks. As following the trauma of undergoing many operations to save what is possible to save of the face, the victim is left with the stigma of having to deal with the long-term effects of the damage.

This could include trying to find employment, as many employers baulk at the sight of women with disfigured faces, and rather than the victim getting the help and assistance that they need to deal with their disfigurement, they end up avoiding public places, where they are often treated like pariahs, and in despair, many commit suicide.

With the Basij created to do the dirty deeds of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the recruits carrying out the most despicable of these actions, often are of low intelligence and with lack of humanity, many criminal types are attracted to its ranks.

As far as their trainers are concerned, with all Iranians being force fed the virtues of martyrdom since childhood, individuals chosen for the ranks of the Basij are already brainwashed into the virtues of self-sacrifice, for both leadership and state.

After being put through rigorous training, the recruits are heavily indoctrinated with their Supreme Leaders fanatical Shiite ideology, leaving them with the type of human makeup that is easy to control.

With joining the Basij being relatively easy, all a recruit needs to be as far as acceptance is concerned, is ideologically sound in his views on the doctrine and ready to die for the cause of its advancement. In a country of soaring unemployment, it is very hard for them to acquire work, and such being the case, joining the Basij can be quite lucrative.

Levels of membership

Basij has three levels of membership; the Active Basij, Special Basij and Honoree Guardsmen (IRGC), with the upper echelon of these units being paid a salary of four million rials or $400 per day, which exceeds that of a teacher. But even with some rank and file members not exactly receiving a salary, there are plenty of perks that go with the job, especially those in the form of social mobility.

Although the Iranian government likes to exaggerate the size of numbers in the ranks of the Basij, claiming there are five million members, various analysts have put the number closer to one million. But when you take into consideration such a vast army of thugs, based in just about every village, town and city across Iran, it is still quite a considerable force.

So knowing they swoop into an area like a motorcycle gang, fully armed with clubs, knives and quite often guns, it makes the ordinary Iranian citizen think twice about breaking any of the regime’s draconian rules, whether connected to morality or otherwise.

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