A woman strips down to her underwear at an Iranian university in apparent protest

A woman at an Iranian university stripped down to her underwear in protest after reportedly being brutally stopped by university security for not wearing a headscarf.

A video of the incident on Saturday shows a naked woman sitting by the steps of an outdoor branch of Tehran’s Islamic Azad University. It later shows a woman walking down a sidewalk and crossing a street before being surrounded by law enforcement and seemingly being pushed into a car.

Not wearing a hijab is a crime punishable under the Iranian regime’s Sharia law. The law is enforced by a task force known as the Morality Police that patrols the cities. In universities, the mandatory wearing of the hijab by students is monitored by the security forces located in the colleges.

The woman was first taken to the police station, and then transferred to a psychiatric center, reports the Telegram channel of the Iranian newspaper. Farkhitegan. A university spokesman said the “real motive” for the act was still under investigation, Farhihtegan said.

MORE: Iran arrests women’s rights activist ahead of Woman, Life, Freedom anniversary.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, protesters have long been sent to psychiatric facilities, claiming that their acts of resistance were caused by unstable mental health.

The video of the woman, who has not been officially identified, went viral on social media as of Sunday, and people are demanding to know what happened to the woman. Many people and activists are praising her for her “courage” and “resistance”, sharing the video with the hashtag “Woman, Life, Freedom”, a slogan for women’s rights in Iran.

Taking issue with the regime’s decision to commit the woman to a psychiatric clinic, one account on X wrote that the woman was “not crazy,” writing: “The girl is not crazy. She had no weapon to resist except her body.”

MORE: Iran reinstates notorious ‘morality police’ to enforce hijab law

Amnesty International called on the authorities to immediately release the woman, and in publish on X urged that “prior to her release, the authorities must protect her from torture and other ill-treatment” and provide her with the opportunity to contact her family and a lawyer.

“The allegations of beating and sexual violence against her during her arrest require an independent and impartial investigation,” the human rights non-governmental organization added. “The guilty must be brought to justice.”

Mai Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Islamic Republic of Iran, wrote on it account X that she will closely monitor the incident, including how the authorities react to it.

MORE: One year after Mahsa Amini’s death, Iranian activists are still fighting for freedom despite regime brutality

After deadly nationwide protests in September 2022, a growing number of Iranian women are speaking out against laws requiring the wearing of headscarves.

The protests followed the tragic death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman who was taken into custody by the morality police for allegedly not fully following the rules of wearing a hijab. The death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in police custody has sparked the longest anti-government protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Human rights groups more than 500 people are said to have been killed during these demonstrations and, according to the Islamic News Agency, more than 20,000 people have been arrested.

Amini became a symbol of resistance that ignited the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which saw protests and the rallying of people of all generations and genders in the streets fighting for freedom from a violent regime.

A woman strips down to her underwear at an Iranian university in apparent protest first appeared on abcnews.go.com