A woman in Qazvin has been arrested by security forces and taken to an unknown location after she took part in a national day of protest against forced hijab in Iran.
Suri Babai Chegini was detained on Wednesday evening. It came a day after she had posted a video online of herself and her husband walking in the street, her unveiled, in response to an online call to push back against recent clampdowns on women’s freedom of dress by the regime.
Scores of women across the country did the same on Wednesday, using the Persian hashtag #Hijab_Without_Hijab. “Today,” Chegini said in her video, “the brave women of my land showed that they won’t be short-changed on their rights, even if they are arrested.”
Her husband, Mohammad Reza Murad Behrouzi, had also spoken on camera, denouncing some of the other discriminatory laws against women in Iran: inheritance rights, custody laws, and the right to divorce.
The next day Murad Behrouzi said eight security agents, including two women, had descended on his brother-in-law’s house and taken Chegini away. The officers reportedly seized her mobile phone and those of her two children, threatening to beat her 13-year-old daughter.
Both Chegini and Murad Behrouzi have been targeted by the authorities in the past over their peaceful civic activities. Murad Behrouzi was previously sentenced to a year in jail and a fine by Qazvin Revolutionary Court.
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