A woman at an Iranian university stripped down to her underwear in an apparent act of protest after she was reportedly violently detained by university security forces for not wearing a headscarf.

Video of Saturday’s incident shows a naked woman sitting next to a staircase in an outdoor area of ​​a branch of Tehran’s Islamic Azad University. The woman is later shown walking down the sidewalk and crossing the street before being surrounded by security forces and apparently pushed into a car.

Not wearing a hijab is a punishable offense under the Iranian regime’s Sharia law. The law is overseen by a task force known as the moral police, which patrols the cities. At universities, security forces based within the universities monitor students so that they do not wear the mandatory hijab.

The woman was initially taken to a police station and then transferred to a psychiatric center, according to the Iranian newspaper’s Telegram channel. Farhikhtegan. A university spokesperson said the “real motive” for the act is still under investigation, Farhikhtegan reported.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has a history of placing protesters in psychiatric facilities, claiming that their acts of resistance are due to their unstable mental health.

Video of the woman, who has not been officially identified, circulated widely on social media since Sunday, with people demanding answers about what happened to the woman. Many people and activists praise her for her “courage” and “resistance”, and share the video with the hashtag “Women, Life, Freedom”, a slogan for women’s rights in Iran.

Objecting to the regime’s decision to take the woman to a psychiatric clinic, an account on X posted that the woman “is not crazy,” writing: “The girl is not crazy. She had no weapon to resist except her body.”

Amnesty International has called on the authorities to immediately release the woman and, in a publish in X He urged that “pending her release, the authorities must protect her from torture and other ill-treatment” and ensure that she can contact her family and a lawyer.

“Allegations of beatings and sexual violence against her during her arrest need independent and impartial investigations,” the human rights non-governmental organization added. “Those responsible must be held accountable.”

Mai Sato, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Islamic Republic of Iran, published on her account x will closely monitor the incident, including how authorities respond to it.

A growing number of Iranian women have been rejecting laws requiring headscarves since the deadly nationwide protests in September 2022.

The protests came after the tragic death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman who was detained by morality police for allegedly not fully complying with hijab regulations. The death of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman in police custody sparked the longest anti-government protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Human rights groups They say more than 500 people died in those demonstrations and, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency, more than 20,000 people were arrested.

Amini became a symbol of resistance that sparked the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, which sparked protests and brought all generations and sexes together in the streets to fight for freedom from a violent regime.