Tehran police arrest 29 citizens protesting compulsory hijab

Tehran police announced the arrest of 29 people in the city who took off their headscarves in the streets in protest against the mandatory hijab. Police said the detainees were linked to the "White Wednesdays" campaign.

According to a report by Tasnim News Agency on Thursday, February 1, Tehran police announced that these individuals "had removed their hijabs following a call from satellite channels under the title of White Wednesday... as part of this campaign."

The report, however, did not provide any explanation about the place, time, or manner of arrest of these 29 people, and only described them as "deceited."

According to this report, the police have handed over these detainees to judicial authorities.

The Young Journalists Club also called these 29 people "those deceived by the Sneaky Freedoms Campaign" and quoted Tehran police as saying that they had disrupted the "social security" of citizens.

The Sneaky Freedoms campaign was launched by Masih Alinejad, a US-based journalist, to combat the compulsory hijab in Iran in recent years, and has been welcomed by a large number of Iranian women inside and outside the country.

For several months, this campaign, under the title "White Wednesdays," has been asking its followers to take to the streets every Wednesday wearing white headscarves, protesting against the mandatory hijab, and then sending pictures of their protest to the campaign.

But the new arrests come after a video of a young girl on Tehran's Enghelab Street went viral on social media on Wednesday, January 26, showing her walking on a power pole, tying her headscarf to a stick, and waving it like a flag. The girl, known as the "Enqelab Street Girl" and identified by some social media users as Vida Movahed, has been released after being arrested twice, according to Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer and human rights activist.

Masih Alinejad: Today's women's protest is the result of all these years of repression

Meanwhile, Masih Alinejad emphasized in an interview with the Radio Farda website that today's protest by these women is due to the Iranian government's continuous "suppression" of them over all these years, which has now manifested itself in this way.

He stated: "The main reason why the Revolutionary Girls, on their own initiative, hung the symbol of the compulsory hijab on a pole is that they are protesting their arrest and suppression by the Guidance Patrol and the Security Police and are demanding their lost rights."

Ms. Alinejad continued the conversation by citing some official statistics provided by the Islamic Republic regarding the treatment of women. She stated: "The police themselves officially announced that in just one year, they had arrested or stopped on the street and had cases filed against 3.6 million people for not wearing the hijab. Eighteen thousand of these people were sent to court. Forty thousand cars were seized in just eight months for not wearing the hijab. Therefore, Iranian women were arrested and had cases filed against them before they protested against the mandatory hijab."

Masih Alinejad concluded by saying, "The peaceful protests of the Daughters of the Revolution and the women of the White Wednesdays campaign were a reaction to these repressions, pressures, and violent behavior of the Ershad patrol."

On Monday, February 29, other images were published on social media showing at least six people in Tehran and one person in Isfahan repeating this move by climbing power transmission poles.

The repercussions of these girls' actions have been so widespread that the hashtag "girl_of_revolution_street" has changed to "girls_of_revolution_street" and has become one of the main trends on Twitter.

The following day, reports and images were published about several women publicly protesting against the mandatory hijab in several other cities in Iran, including Mashhad.

A protester in Mashhad, wearing a veil, hung a scarf on a pole and shook it.

In addition to women, images of a number of men have also been posted online, waving headscarves or carrying placards to protest against the mandatory hijab and express solidarity with women who are taking this action.

Before announcing the arrest of these 29 people, the German news agency had reported the arrest of six of the "Girls of Revolution Street," citing people they identified as "eyewitnesses."

This is despite the fact that Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi had only confirmed the arrest of one of the girls on Enghelab Street.

Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, the Attorney General of Iran, has also called the actions of women who remove their headscarves in protest against the mandatory hijab in Iran "a minor and insignificant matter," "childish," and out of "ignorance."

He said, "I think those who did this were mostly out of ignorance and emotional outbursts, which may have been inspired by outside the country."

Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi himself is among the judicial officials who, in September 2016, stated that it was not possible to appoint an "officer" for all families and individuals in the country, and that "negative" measures regarding the hijab in Iran had been ineffective.

According to the note to Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code, "Women who appear in public places without a religious veil will be sentenced to imprisonment from 10 days to two months or a fine of 50,000 to 500,000 rials."

Soheila Jellodarzadeh, a representative of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, has described the action of the "Girls of Revolution Street" as the result of "unnecessary hardship," "pressure," and "wrong behavior" by the government.

Ms. Jellodarzadeh said that "there was a time when we placed restrictions on women and put them under unnecessary pressure. This is what caused these pressures to create an uprising and the girls on Enghelab Street to hang their headscarves on poles."

Source: Radio Farda