A female student at a university in Tehran stripped to her underwear in an act of public protest over the country’s strict Islamic dress code after being harassed by campus security officers for not wearing a hijab (France 24, Guardian, Telegraph).
Videos circulating widely on social media show the unidentified student sitting outside the campus in her underwear while surrounded by security guards.
Another video shows her walking around the campus in her bra and knickers while fellow students film her on their mobile phones.
Student social medial channel the Amir Kabir newsletter said the woman had been harassed by members of the pro-government Basij militia for not wearing a headscarf.
The hijab became compulsory for women and girls over the age of 9 in 1981, two years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Under the country’s current mandatory dress code, women must wear a headscarf and loose-fitting clothes in public.
Many women have flouted the rule over the years, and pushed the boundaries of what officials say is acceptable clothing.
The female student’s act of resistance began after a confrontation inside Islamic Azad University’s science and research centre on Saturday.
In response to having her clothes torn by Basij operatives, she chose to remove her remaining garments as a protest.
One witness described seeing the girl “being grabbed and forcibly taken by security forces” near the entrance of the faculty.
“She wasn’t wearing a headscarf,” the witness added. “Then they reached the security building near the entrance, where a male and a female security guard grabbed her and tried to take her into the office with force.
“She resisted, and her hoodie was torn off her body, it made her very angry, and she took off the rest of her clothes.
“She angrily yelled at them and took off her trousers – she sat outside the campus for a few minutes and the officer became more aggressive.
“I couldn’t see much but, a few minutes after she started walking, several plain-clothes officers ambushed her and forced her into a car.”
About 10 security guards were captured on video forcibly bundling the young woman into a vehicle.
“Oh God, how many of them are attacking just one person?” one onlooker can be heard saying. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” another said.
Amir Kabir newsletter reported that she suffered injuries during the arrest, including severe head trauma after being struck against a vehicle. Witnesses said traces of blood were visible at the scene.
Mohammad Ghorbani, spokesperson for Islamic Azad University, said that the student was taken to a psychiatric hospital. There has been no further information about her whereabouts or condition.
This isn’t the first time that officials and media affiliated with the Islamic Republic have accused protesters of “mental disorders” and forcibly placed them in psychiatric institutions.
Indeed, the forced transfer of peaceful protesters, dissidents, and political prisoners to psychiatric hospitals as tools of repression to delegitimize acts of protest and silence dissenting voices has become a routine practice by the country’s authorities since the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ protests that erupted across Iran in 2022 following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who had been arrested for an alleged breach of the dress code.
Amini became a symbol of resistance in Iran after she was detained by Iran’s morality police on September 13th, 2022, in Tehran for the crime of wearing her hijab “improperly”. Four days later, and while still in police custody, she fell into a coma and died. The authorities claimed that the healthy 22-year-old with no known medical issues had suffered a sudden heart attack.
In the aftermath of her death, many women defied the country’s Islamic law to cast off their headscarves during a massive wave of protests which were later violently curbed by authorities.
Melika Gharegozlou, a journalism student and well-known student activist at Allameh Tabataba’i University, was arrested on October 2nd, 2022, and sentenced to over four years in prison for posting a video of herself without the state-mandated headscarf. She was then forcibly transferred to the Aminabad Psychiatric Hospital in Tehran against her consent where she was reportedly tortured.
In July 2023, Iranian courts ‘diagnosed’ three prominent actresses – Afsaneh Bayegan, Azadeh Samadi, and Leila Bolukat – with mental illnesses after they appeared in public without the mandatory hijab. This judicial action sparked controversy, with leading psychiatrists condemning the misuse of psychiatric diagnoses to suppress dissent.
Four months later, footage emerged showing a young woman, Roya Zakeri, in Tabriz shouting “death to the dictator” and “death to Khamenei” after being harassed by morality police over her hijab. Having arrested her, security forces beat her until she lost consciousness and then transferred her to Razi Hospital, a neurology and psychiatry facility in Tabriz, claiming she had a mental illness and was experiencing delusions.
News of the latest arrest of an Iranian woman for daring to stand up for bodily autonomy and freedom from oppressive, neo-medieval state regulations comes as a new bill makes its way through the country’s parliament, which will harden the regulations governing how citizens can dress in public, with authorities already enforcing it before its formal approval.
According to Article 50 of the contentious hijab and chastity bill, anyone found “naked, semi-naked, or wearing clothing deemed improper in public” will be immediately arrested and handed over to judicial authorities. It is not known whether the recently disappeared female student’s protest was in response to this proposed new law.
The bill also implements gender segregation across a wide range of settings, including universities, administrative centres, educational institutions, parks, and tourist locations, and even in hospital treatment sections.
People found in breach of the new rules also face a ban on leaving the country and using the internet for a period of six months to two years.
