Iran has no ‘safety’ view on schoolgirls who undress in public | News

The Iranian government said the woman was first taken to the police station and then treated at a facility.

Tehran, Iran – Iran has not yet filed a lawsuit against a female student who was arrested after taking off her clothes at university, a government spokesman said.

In an action perceived by human rights advocates, Amnesty International and some social media users as a protest against Iran’s mandatory Islamic dress code, the young woman removed her underwear in public at the Islamic Azad University campus in northwest Tehran on Saturday.

He was detained by university security and taken to the police station.

An official from the university and some local media stated that the woman suffered from mental illness.

A clip allegedly showing the young woman’s ex-husband was also shared in local media. The man, whose face was blurred, was heard crying and saying that he had mental problems and was a mother of two children.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the footage.

On Tuesday, Fatemeh Mohajerani, the first female spokesperson for the Iranian government since the 1979 Iranian revolution, told the reformist Ham-Mihan newspaper that the woman was taken from the police station to a facility for treatment.

“No legal case has been filed against this student. The government has a social perspective on this issue rather than a security perspective. “As an individual who has a problem, we will try to solve this student’s problem,” he said.

The government spokesman added that he could return to university in the future if he is determined to have a mental problem. According to Mohajerani, the situation awaits the decision of the authorities.

He said the reason why the university was so quick to announce that the woman had a mental illness may have been because a file was found on the woman following a university-wide psychiatric assessment program at an earlier stage.

Jailed Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said in a statement that the woman’s movement was a show of “challenge” to a system that oppresses women and their bodies.

Iranian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release the university student who was violently arrested on November 2 at Tehran’s Islamic Azad University after she removed her clothes to protest security guards’ abusive enforcement of mandatory veiling. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/lI1JXYsgtm

— Amnesty International Iran (@AmnestyIran) November 2, 2024

Amnesty International described the action as “a protest against the abusive use of compulsory headscarf by security officers” at the university.

The organization said he should be protected from any possible ill-treatment and that allegations of violent arrests should be evaluated within the scope of an independent and impartial investigation.

The incident comes at a time when the issue of compulsory hijab remains a hot topic in Iran following months of protests across the country in 2022 and 2023 following the murder of Mahsa Amini in police custody.

The 22-year-old Kurdish woman was arrested in Tehran for allegedly not complying with the strict dress code that was in place shortly after the 1979 revolution. Hundreds of people were killed during the protests.

France, which has adopted a more confrontational rhetoric against the Iranian establishment during the protests than most Western countries and described the protests as a “revolution”, said on Tuesday that it was “closely following” the student’s situation.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot said in his statement to France 2 channel, “I salute the courage of this young woman who demonstrated her resistance and made herself a symbol of the women’s struggle in Iran.”