In Tehran, a student protests in her underwear against the Iranian regime

It's one of those images that goes viral almost instantly. This Saturday, November 2, it is difficult to avoid sharing this video where we discover a student from the Islamic Azad University of Tehran in her underwear. The incident followed an altercation between the young woman and Basij paramilitary forces, who allegedly ripped off her hijab and asked her to dress properly. In response, she allegedly took off her clothes in order to go out into the street in her underwear, before being put into a car by a troop of men in civilian clothes. To date, Amnesty International has called on Iranian authorities to release “immediately and unconditionally” the student. According to the student media Amir Kabirno information has since been communicated on her state of health, nor on her current whereabouts.

Women in Iran, direct targets of the moral police

Although the video of this young woman quickly went viral, it is not new. The Islamic regime's repression against women and girls who do not wear the veil, or who wear it incorrectly, is raging. On social networks, videos of the same type circulate, and almost always display the same pattern. An intervention by the moral police, who came to pick up a young woman. This is precisely what happened in the case of Mahsa Aminia young Iranian Kurd likely beaten to death in police custody for wearing her veil incorrectly in September 2022. The Iranian authorities deny any involvement, and assure that her death is due to pre-existing health problems, which the family of the victim has always refuted. This is not the first death in suspicious conditions in Iran. In 2003, she was the photojournalist Ziba Kazemi who disappeared following a cerebral hemorrhage after receiving a blow to the head in Evin prison.

The repression of the moral police increased with the coming to power of the ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raissi in 2021 (died in July 2024, he has since been replaced by Massoud Pezechkian). Since then, a “war against women and girls” has been taking place every day in Iran, as Amnesty International has often recalled. For example, since April, security forces have “intensified the application of the compulsory wearing of the veil in public spaces by subjecting women and girls to constant surveillance, beatings, sexual violence, electric shocks, arbitrary arrests and detention and other forms of harassment” we can read in a press release from the NGO. Entitled “Noor plan”, this national campaign launched in April 2024 had the direct consequence of a clear increase, in public places, in the number of security patrols on foot, motorcycle, car and police van responsible for ensuring the application of the compulsory wearing of the veil.

Increasingly powerful protest movements

Since the death of Mahsa Aminiit is an unprecedented protest movement against religious power which animates part of the population in Iran, from universities to the streets, and even beyond the borders, where the Iranian diaspora is the strongest (as in Istanbul or Toronto). Through the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, many Iranian women are contesting the brutal repression of the regime in place, which seeks to punish deviations from morality. If some women get away with only a $10 fine for refusing to wear the veil (or for wearing it incorrectly), the fate of others is more uncertain, as in the case of the student who walked this Saturday November 2, 2024 in underwear in front of Islamic Azad University in Tehran.

Acts of rebellion like this would have been unthinkable before the death of Mahsa Aminibut are becoming more and more common, as the Iranian regime becomes harsher towards women. The anger is palpable among the population. The French were able to see this in May 2024 with the presence, at the Cannes Festival, of the filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof came to present his latest feature film, Seeds of the wild fig treeafter having secretly left Iranian territory (he was sentenced there on appeal to eight years in prison, five of which were applicable). Shot in complete secrecy, the film marks the exile of the director, who now lives in Germany, as well as the persistent concern for the rest of his team held in Iran. Accompanied by a few people, but also photos of his absent actors, Mohammad Rasoulofdelivered to France and the world a memorable political firebrand, which imprints on our retina the rallying cry “Woman, life, freedom”. Directly inspired by the context of particularly fierce political conflagration in Iran, following the death of the young Mahsa Amini, Seeds of the wild fig tree offers an overview of what Iranian women have been experiencing every day for several years.