Woman detained after taking off clothes and walking in underwear at Iran university

A woman has been detained for stripping down to her underwear outside an Iranian university campus in protest of the nation's strict dress code, according to social media posts and local media reports.

A video circulating on X and Instagram showed the unidentified woman sitting on part of an outdoor staircase at Tehran's Islamic Azad University. In the minute-long video filmed from a nearby building, she spoke briefly with a man in a blue shirt before pacing in her socks and underwear with her arms folded.

Another video on X shows the woman walking next to a line of parked cars, then struggling with several people next to one of the vehicles. 

CBC News has not independently verified the footage and has not established what happened before and after the videos were filmed.

Amnesty Iran, a branch of Amnesty International, shared one of the videos of the woman online and said she was protesting "abusive enforcement of compulsory veiling by security officials" at the school. The organization called for her immediate release.

"Pending her release, authorities must protect her from torture & other ill-treatment & ensure access to family & lawyer. Allegations of beatings & sexual violence against her during arrest need independent & impartial investigations. Those responsible must [be] held to account," read a post on X.

The UN's special rapporteur on the Islamic Republic of Iran said she was also aware of the arrest.

"I will be monitoring this incident closely, including the authorities' response," Mai Sato wrote on X.

The Amir Kabir newsletter, a student social media channel, said in an Instagram post that members of an Iranian volunteer paramilitary group tore the woman's headscarf and clothes, while the state-run Fars News Agency said the student had been wearing "inappropriate clothes" and "stripped" after security guards spoke to her about her clothing.

In a series of his own posts on X, Islamic Azad University spokesperson Amir Mahjob said the incident was related to the woman's mental health.

"At the police station … it was found that she was under severe mental pressure and had a mental disorder," he wrote.

Under Iranian dress code, women must wear a headscarf and loose-fitting clothes in public. It is not clear what the woman was wearing before she removed her clothes.

The arrest comes more than two years after Mahsa Amini, 22, died following her arrest by Iran's morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly, in violation of national dress code. Widespread protests in the wake of her death became one of the most intense challenges to the theocratic regime since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The country's new reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian campaigned on a promise to halt the harassment of women by morality police. Still, since Amini's death, videos have emerged of officers roughing up women and girls.

In 2023, a teenage Iranian girl was injured in a mysterious incident on Tehran's Metro while not wearing a headscarf and later died in hospital. In July, activists say police opened fire on a woman fleeing a checkpoint in an attempt to avoid her car being impounded for not wearing her hijab.

The pre-reform newspaper Ham-Mihan reported in August on an unpublished survey conducted under the supervision of Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance that found the hijab had become one of the most important issues in the country — something it hadn't seen previously.

"This issue has been on people's minds more than ever before," sociologist Simin Kazemi told the newspaper.