A student in Iran took off all but her underwear in front of her university. Some student and rights groups say she did this to protest the country’s strict Islamic dress code.
The woman is seen sitting outside the university in her underwear and hair down in a video going around social media and shared by the rights group Amnesty International.
She points to her classmates, most of whom are women and wearing headscarves, and then she walks around the building.
In a different video, she is seen walking down a road while still not dressed. Suddenly, a group of men appear, wrap her up in a car, and drive off.
Amnesty said on Saturday that the woman was “violently arrested” after she spoke out against the “abusive enforcement” of the dress code at Islamic Azad University in Tehran.
The woman had been groped by members of the Basij, an Iranian volunteer paramilitary group, on university grounds, according to the Amir Kabir newsletter, a social media site for Iranian students. Police were said to have torn her clothes and ripped her headscarf.
According to eyewitnesses, state-run According to Fars news agency, the student took off her clothes after two security guards “calmly talked” to her and told her she wasn’t following the dress code.
The director of public relations for the university said the woman was having mental health problems.
CNN has not been able to independently substantiate the events that occurred.
The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mai Sato, said on X that she would be “closely following this incident and the authorities’ response.”
Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the UN, said that both the video and the report that the woman had been arrested were “disturbing.” He also said that Iran should make it clear where she is right now.
Iran’s strict interpretation of Islamic law, which is backed up by the country’s so-called “morality police,” says that women must wear a hijab (or headscarf) in public.
It is possible for Iranian women to get harsh punishments for small offenses.
In 2022, protests broke out all over Iran because of the dress code after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died while being held by the morality police for not wearing her headscarf properly.
After that, the Iranian government launched a violent crackdown that killed hundreds of people. Many Iranian women have protested since then by taking off their headscarves in public.
Amnesty demanded that the Azad University student be freed right away and without conditions. They also wanted her to be able to see her family and lawyer.
Human rights activists said in a statement on X that the claims of beatings and sexual assaults against her while she was being detained need to be looked into by a separate and fair group. “Those who are accountable must be held.”
Amir Mahjob, who is in charge of public relations at Azad University, wrote on X that the university’s security team had stepped in “after the indecent act by one of the students” and taken her to the police station.
He then used a police report to say in a later post that the student “was under severe mental pressure and had a mental disorder.”
He also said that the student was a mother of two who was no longer with her husband. He hoped that online “rumors” would not hurt the family’s reputation.
