Iran’s science minister, Hossein Simaei, on Wednesday described a female student’s public act of stripping down to her underwear as “immoral and uncustomary”.
“She broke the norms, and her behaviour was not based on sharia, was immoral and uncustomary,” Simaei said on the sidelines of a weekly cabinet meeting, adding she had not been expelled from her university.
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Footage circulated online Saturday showing a woman, identified as a student at the Islamic Azad University in Tehran, sitting and briefly walking around campus and later on the street in her underwear.
“Those who republished this footage spread prostitution,” said Simaei, adding such incidents “should not be encouraged as they are neither morally nor religiously justified.”
Media outlets in Iran shared a blurred clip of the student.
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Amnesty International said she “was violently arrested after she removed her clothes in protest against abusive enforcement of compulsory veiling by security officials.”
Covering the neck and head and dressing modestly became mandatory for women in Iran following the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Government spokesman Fatemeh Mohajerani dismissed reports that the incident began with a hijab warning and denied she was violently arrested.
“The issue was actually something else,” she said, noting that “this level of nudity is not accepted anywhere.”
“The girl was not dealt with harshly in any way,” she added.
In a statement Saturday, the university said the girl was “handed to the police station” and found to be “under severe pressure and suffering from a mental disorder.”
Months-long nationwide protests shook Iran following the September 2022 death in custody of 22-year-old Iranian-Kurd Mahsa Amini.
Amini had been arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women, requiring them to cover their head and neck and wear modest clothing in public.
Her death triggered months-long protests in Iran, with hundreds of people, including dozens of security personnel, killed in the unrest. Thousands of demonstrators were arrested.