Iranian student receives "special treatment" after underwear protest

DER SPIEGEL Iranian student receives "special treatment" after underwear protest 10 hours • 2 minutes reading time A student in Tehran stripped down to her underwear in public - probably in protest against the dress code for women. The authorities are having her treated for "psychological instability". An Iranian student who briefly walked through the capital Tehran in her underwear in protest against the morality police has been taken to a "care center" for "special treatment". The student suffers from "psychological instability" and was taken to a specialized facility in an ambulance, the Iranian embassy in Paris said on Wednesday. The woman, who studies at the Islamic Asad University in Tehran, stripped down to her underwear on Saturday in protest against the Basij militia and walked across the campus and a street in the Iranian capital in her underwear. Videos of the protest action spread rapidly on online networks. The Iranian Minister of Research Hossein Simaei criticized the protest as "immoral." The young woman's behavior violated laws and was not based on Sharia law, he said. After the protest, the woman's whereabouts were initially unclear - activists feared that the authorities could send her to a psychiatric institution. Footage shows the woman being forcibly loaded into a car by men in civilian clothes. According to the embassy in Paris, the woman is a mother of two children who is separated from her husband. "As soon as she has recovered, she will resume her studies at the university," the embassy said. However, the final decision rests with the university. According to Persian-language foreign media, security personnel at the university criticized the woman for her clothing and tore her headscarf. The woman then exposed herself. Islamic law in Iran requires women to wear a strict dress code, which requires them to wear a headscarf and loose clothing that covers the body. According to the human rights organization Amnesty International, the student had removed her clothes to protest against "the abusive enforcement of the headscarf requirement by security officials." She was then "violently arrested." Amnesty International described reports that the woman had been taken "to an unnamed psychiatric clinic" as very alarming. The opposition activist Masih Alinejad, who lives in the USA and has campaigned for years for the abolition of the headscarf requirement in Iran, said that the student was "not only mentally healthy, but also a lively, courageous woman full of cheerfulness and energy."