Iranian student who stripped to protest dress code called ‘troubled’

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A female Iranian university student who publicly stripped to her underwear does not represent a security issue, but she is a “troubled individual” now receiving treatment, a government spokesperson said Tuesday

The young woman undressed on Saturday at the Islamic Azad University in Tehran, in seeming protest of the country’s strict dress code for women, according to social media reactions, Reuters is reporting.

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She sustained injuries after being physically assaulted during her arrest, according to an Iranian media source that cited a student newsletter for the student group Amir Kabir, reports The Independent.

“Instead of viewing this issue under a security lens, we are rather looking at it with a social lens and seek to solve the problems of this student as a troubled individual,” government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Tuesday. It was the first official reaction to the event, Reuters reports.

Reinforcing the idea that the young woman is somehow unstable for doing what she did, Mohajerani went on to say that “she needs treatment, and that needs to be completed” before she is permitted to return to class.

She said the young woman was transferred from the police station to a treatment centre. Mohajerani did not say what treatment she would receive.

The young woman was identified on several social media accounts as Ahoo Daryaei, but Reuters says it could not independently verify her identity.

‘Motives for the student’s actions currently under investigation’: university spokesperson

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According to the Jerusalem Post, Amnesty International’s Iran division wrote in reaction to the incident that “Iran’s authorities must immediately & unconditionally release the university student who was violently arrested on 2 Nov. after she removed her clothes in protest against abusive enforcement of compulsory veiling by security officials at Tehran’s Islamic Azad University.”

Further, Amnesty says that “(p)ending her release, authorities must protect her from torture & other ill-treatment & ensure access to family & lawyer. Allegations of beatings & sexual violence against her during arrest need independent & impartial investigations. Those responsible must held to account.”

However, university authorities had different ideas about the incident.

“Following an indecent act by a student at the Science and Research Branch of the university, campus security intervened and handed the individual over to law enforcement authorities,” said Amir Mahjoub, director General of Public Relations at Islamic Azad University. “The motives and underlying reasons for the student’s actions are currently under investigation.”

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The woman was detained by security guards at the university and then taken by police, reports the Jerusalem Post.

“(A)t the police station…it was found that she was under severe mental pressure and had a mental disorder,” Mahjob said Saturday.

The website, Khabaronline, which is not an official website, says Reuters, reported that the young woman was not facing any criminal charges.

‘How Iranian women protest in Iran is none of your business’: Ontario MPP

“Sometimes it takes deeds, not words,” wrote Iranian-Canadian human rights activist and author Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay about the incident on X Sunday. “Powerful act of nonviolent civil disobedience displayed in Iran by #AhooDaryaei (آهو_دریایی) in response to regime suppression forces. They tore her clothes for not properly wearing a hijab. In defiance, she removed all her clothes to protest this gender apartheid regime.”

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Growing numbers of Iranian women have defied authorities by discarding their veils after nationwide protests that followed the death in September 2022 of young Iranian-Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini. She died while in the custody of the morality police for allegedly violating hijab rules.

“No one is more obsessed with calling Iranian women “Islamophobic” for speaking out against the terrorist Islamic Regime occupying Iran than Islamofascists like Sabreena,” Iranian-Canadian, Ontario MPP Goldie Ghamari wrote on X in response to a comment by Rutgers University professor, Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui, who accused “western Liberal feminists” of being “obsessed with the idea of Muslim women taking their clothes off”. 

“How Iranian women protest in Iran is none of your business,” wrote Ghamari on X.

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On Monday, the Iran-based Tasnim news agency said people reacting on social media to the recent incident are like the “anti-Iran movement which jumped on the Mahsa Amini affair in 2022”.

According to the Post, the Israel Defence Force’s Farsi-language social media said, “We are witnessing one of the most powerful revolutions in history. A revolution in which women are no longer willing to sit silently in the face of the violation of their dignity and their basic rights by a handful of brainwashed…and libertines of the system.”

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