Iranian Woman Detained for Stripping Naked In Tehran University

A female student stripped to her underwear outside her university in Iran in what some student and rights groups say was a protest against the country’s strict Islamic dress code.

A video circulating on social media and shared by rights group Amnesty International shows the woman sat outside the university in her underwear and with her hair uncovered.

She gestures toward her fellow students, many of whom are female and wearing headscarves, before strolling around the premises.

Amnesty said Saturday the woman had been “violently arrested” after she protested the “abusive enforcement” of the dress code at Tehran’s Islamic Azad University.

The university’s public relations director said the woman was suffering from mental health issues.

Mai Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said on X that she would be “monitoring this incident closely, including the authorities’ response.”

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric described both the video and the report of the woman’s arrest as “disturbing,” and said Iran should make clear her present whereabouts.

The wearing of a hijab (or headscarf) in public is mandatory for women under Iran’s strict interpretation of Islamic law that is enforced by the country’s so-called morality police.

Iranian women can be subjected to harsh punishment, even for minor infractions.

Protests erupted across Iran in 2022 against the dress code following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in the custody of the morality police after being arrested for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly.

Iran’s repression of protesters and women amounts to ‘crimes against humanity,’ UN report says

The subsequent violent crackdown by the Iranian regime killed hundreds of people. Since then, many Iranian women have protested by removing their headscarves in public.

Amnesty called for the immediate and unconditional release of the Azad University student and demanded she be given access to her family and lawyer.

The human rights campaigners said in a statement on X. “Those responsible must (be) held to account.”

Azad University’s public relations director Amir Mahjob said in a post on X that the university’s security team had intervened “after the indecent act by one of the students” and had taken her to a police station.

In a later post citing a police report, he said the student “was under severe mental pressure and had a mental disorder.”

He also said the student was a mother-of-two, separated from her husband, and that he hoped her family’s reputation would not suffer from online “rumors.”

CNN/Ejiofor Ezeifeoma