Saeed Kamali Dehghan - Second woman arrested in Tehran for hijab protest
A second woman has
been arrested in Iran for
protesting against the country’s compulsory hijab rules after standing on a telecoms
box on a Tehran street, taking off her headscarf and holding it aloft on a
stick. The protest follows a
similar action last month against the country’s requirement that women cover
themselves from head to toe in public. Pictures posted on
social media on Monday showed at least three other women standing on top of
telecoms boxes in Tehran in apparent solidarity with the women, including one
near Ferdowsi Square. A widely shared
smartphone image of the first protest (the main image above) showed a young
woman standing on a telecoms box on Enghelab Street in the centre of the Iranian
capital. The woman was later identified as 31-year-old Vida Movahed.
Movahed’s act of
resistance coincided
with a wave of protests that spread across the country. Although they
were not directly linked, her action embodied the aspirations of a movement of
young Iranians frustrated with the lack of social and political freedoms. Many Iranians,
including men, changed their social media profile pictures to images inspired
by Movahed’s protest, and shared a hashtag that translated as “the girl of
Enghelab Street”. Movahed’s identity was
initially a mystery until Iran’s most prominent human rights lawyer, Nasrin
Sotoudeh, established she had been arrested. Sotoudeh said on her Facebook page
on Sunday that Movahed had been released.
On Monday, reacting to
the new protest, Sotoudeh wrote: “Today, I was informed that a second woman has
stood on a telecoms box in the same place, holding up her hijab aloft on a
stick. Her message is clear, girls and women are fed up with forced [hijab].
Let women decide themselves about their own body.” The identity of the
second woman has not been revealed. Women’s rights campaigner Masih Alinejad
said witnesses told her the woman had been arrested. Pictures posted on social
media showed the woman wearing a green wristband, in apparent reference to the
2009 Green movement whose leaders are still under house arrest.
Vahid Online, a
popular channel on Telegram, the most popular social network in Iran, posted a
series of images showing other women taking their headscarves off and holding
them up on a stick.
One image showed a
bouquet of flowers laid on top of the first telecoms box that featured in
Movahed’s protest, which was also used by the second woman who has been
arrested.
Iranian law has
compelled women to wear a hijab since the 1979 revolution, but it has been a
difficult policy to enforce. Despite the fear of reprisals, millions of women
in Iran defy the restrictions on a daily basis. A growing number of
women, especially in Tehran, refuse
to wear a hijab while driving, arguing that a car is a private space where
they can dress more freely.. The issue has become
more prominent in recent years, partly thanks to a campaign run by Alinejad
called My Stealthy Freedom. Her Facebook page invites women in Iran to post
pictures of themselves without their headscarves in defiance of the rules. She
is also behind White Wednesdays, a campaign encouraging women to wear white
headscarves and take them off in protest at the rules.
“Forced hijab is the
most visible symbol of oppression against women in Iran, that’s why fighting
for freedom to wear or not to wear hijab is the first step towards full
equality,” Alinejad told the Guardian on Monday. “These women are not
protesting against a piece of cloth, it’s about our identity, our dignity, and
our freedom of choice. Our body, our choice.” Zahra Safyari, an
Iranian woman who voluntarily wears a hijab, tweeted:
“I wear the chador. I chose to wear the hijab, it wasn’t forced on me by my
family or the society, nor it was a work requirement. I am happy with my choice
but I am opposed to forced hijab and that’s why I appreciate the Girls of
Enghelab Street. Religion and hijab should not be compulsory.”
