Iranian woman strips naked and climbs onto police vehicle

Tehran, Feb 3, (dpa/GNA) – An Iranian woman staged a naked protest on the bonnet of a police vehicle in the north-eastern city of Mashhad last week, Tehran’s Hamshahri newspaper and other media reported on Monday, showing blurred video material.

The incident is reported to have occurred at night, but precise details were lacking.

The Shargh daily newspaper reported that the woman was young, that she had stripped completely and had then climbed onto a police vehicle. She then protested vocally against being detained.

Security forces are reported to have attempted to screen off the busy area from view, before the woman was admitted to a hospital.

While details were scant, media and activists described the incident as a protest.

Iranian media also published a video clip apparently showing the woman’s husband, in which he appeals for images of the woman not to be shared. His wife had been undergoing psychiatric treatment before the incident, the man says in the clip.

In November, a female student stripped to her underwear on the outskirts of her campus in Tehran. Video of the event was widely distributed and provoked international comment.

Strict regulations on women’s dress, including the obligation to cover the hair when in public, are in force in the Islamic Republic. Young women have been ostentatiously flouting these rules, which are monitored by public morality guardians.

Since a wave of nationwide protests in the autumn of 2022, many women in the major centres have been resisting the rules on dress, but only two cases of women stripping off have come to attention thus far. Punishment can be severe.

Mashhad, the country’s second-most populous city after Tehran, is a modern metropolis but is also home to a huge place of religious pilgrimage in its centre.

GNA