Iran detains woman who stripped to her underwear in apparent protest at Tehran university

Iranian authorities have detained a young woman who was seen walking around a university in Tehran in her underwear, according to video shared on social media and state news agencies, in what activists say was a protest against enforcement of the country’s strict dress code.

Video showing the woman sitting on an outdoor staircase and then walking around in her underwear was shared widely on social media over the weekend, and has been geolocated to a branch of the Islamic Azad University in the capital, Tehran, by NBC News.

Other students, including women wearing the state-mandated hijab, watch the woman with shock while a group of older people in more formal clothing confer nearby. Another video geolocated by NBC News showed the woman then walking next to the campus along a street before she is seen struggling with a number of people beside a car.

She was later taken to the police station, Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim reported.

It is unclear exactly when the incident occurred but both the video and reports in Iranian media began circulating on Saturday.

The woman’s identity and whereabouts are unclear, but the case drew attention from activists and rights groups who expressed concern for her safety. Authorities in the Islamic Republic have used the morality police to enforce the strict dress code in a crackdown since the protests that swept the country two years ago.

Amnesty International shared the video on X and called for the immediate release of the woman, who it said had been “violently arrested on 2 Nov after she removed her clothes in protest against abusive enforcement of compulsory veiling by security officials.”

The United Nations’ special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Sato, said in a post on X on Saturday that she would be “monitoring this incident closely, including the authorities response.”

State-run newspaper Farhikhtegan and the state-run conservative Fars news agency reported the arrest, saying the woman had acted “inappropriately.”

In a report that included a photo of the woman that had been blurred, Fars said that the student had “arrived inappropriately dressed for class. After receiving a warning from campus security about dress code regulations, she stripped off her clothes and walked around the university.”

A spokesperson for the university, Seyed Amir Mahjob, said the student had been taken to a psychiatric hospital after being detained and that an investigation into her motivations was underway.

In a post Saturday on X, Mahjob rejected the suggestions that the student had protested the dress code and questioned her mental state.

Her arrest is yet another in Iran that appears to carry echoes of the case of Mahsa Amini, who died in a hospital after being taken into police custody in Sept. 2022. Amini, an Iranian-Kurdish woman, was detained by the country’s morality police for allegedly not adhering to the strict dress code. Her death sparked nationwide protests that posed the biggest challenge to the theocratic regime since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

U.S. officials and others have sanctioned Iranian officials over their role in the brutal crackdown that followed.

Although security forces violently ended the protests, since Amini’s death Iranian women and girls have at times removed their headscarves in public in defiance and others around the world have joined in solidarity. 

Even though it carries a risk, Iranian women can increasingly be seen in the restaurants, cafes and malls of Tehran without their headscarves, especially at night or at the weekend.