Student Activists Protest the Formation of a Mental Health Case Against Ahoo Daryaee

A group of student activists from various universities in Iran issued a statement supporting women and their protest movement for legal rights and personal freedoms, defending Ahoo Daryaee, a student at the Science and Research branch of Azad University, and condemning the formation of a mental health case against her. According to the Telegram channel of the National Student Guilds, the statement from this group of students reads, "The rule-breaking action of the Science and Research girl, although unfamiliar to our eyes, brought a moment of anger, rebellion, and frustration before everyone." The statement refers to Ahoo Daryaee, a seventh-semester French language student at Azad University, who on November 3, after an "assault by the university security" under the pretext of not complying with mandatory hijab, staged a protest by being naked in the university courtyard and was subsequently arrested by government agents. The signatories of the statement declared, "We, a group of student activists from universities across the country, have decided to proudly defend the courageous action of Ahoo Daryaee; we condemn any formation of a mental health case against her and promise that the resistance for the liberation of women from the yoke of systematic patriarchal oppression will continue." The statement was signed by student activists from Tehran, Gilan, Tarbiat Modares, Tabatabai, Science and Industry, Beheshti, Nowshirovani Babol, and Kharazmi universities. They emphasized that since the "widespread uprising of women in Esfand 1357 to the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising," women's resistance has never subsided despite lethal repression, referencing the self-immolation of Homa Darabi, a pediatrician and psychiatrist in 1993 in protest against mandatory hijab, and the protest action of Vida Mohammadi, the Girl of the Revolution, in 2017. This group of students stressed that "the patriarchal order, hand in hand with the capitalist system, strives to make women as invisible as possible and turn them into a shadowy commodity." They added that in Iran, especially after the establishment of the Islamic Republic and the enactment of laws based on Shia Islam, women's rights have been disregarded. Accordingly, the statement noted that "historical institutions and forces block any fundamental and rule-breaking demands from women regarding their bodies and individual-social existence in various ways, and the family is also a breeding ground for the reproduction of religion and its created relations." The statement confirmed the complicity of some families with this approach and the ruling system's efforts to keep families aligned with it in dealing with women, stating: "The remarks of some officials of the Islamic Republic regarding the delivery of the Science and Research girl to her family and her being under care indicate the reproduction of the legitimacy of the reactionary family institution as the last bastion of the oppression of women and sexual and gender minorities." The signatory students also pointed out that the ruling system, along with the complicity of families and the existing reactionary elements in society, always seeks to use the pretext of "madness" of protest actions to "violate the independent existence of women in social spheres and to subjugate them within the high walls of the social institutions of the patriarchal regime." The statement revisited the historical process of how mandatory hijab was established after 1979 and the formation of protests against mandatory hijab from the early months following the events of 1979, stating: "With the imposition of hijab, women's bodies were doubly marked and rejected." The signatories also noted the Islamic Republic's policy of mandatory hijab, adding: "The university, as an institution dependent on the government, has always played its repressive role against women's bodies." The signatories of this statement believe that the various restrictions imposed in dormitories and universities impose a specific lifestyle on female students, turning every moment of their university life into a "battlefield." They wrote: "We insist and emphasize that the action of the Science and Research girl was not a sudden brilliance, and any attempt to dehistoricize her rebellion is a naive misunderstanding, as we have seen Ahoo's hands in the hands of Homa, Vida, and other rebellious sisters - whose names we do not know." The statement also referred to the "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprising and noted that two years after this uprising, the ruling reactionary government is attempting to draft and implement a bill titled "Chastity and Hijab." According to the signatories of the protest statement, this bill, "based on the centrality of the reactionary family institution, aims to defend its patriarchal values, issuing a command over all ideological branches of the government to punish, reject, and suppress rebellious bodies with new mechanisms." The text continues that this bill broadly aims to "tighten the urban space and public sphere for women. Therefore, various responsibilities have been assigned to different institutions such as municipalities, state media, universities, schools, ministries, and almost all existing institutions in the country; measures that extend repression at various levels, from the arrangement of urban and advertising spaces to movement in public places." The mandatory hijab law, known as "Chastity and Hijab," was drafted in response to the killing of Mahsa Amini while in custody of the morality police and the subsequent nationwide protests in Iran, and has faced a wave of public protests since its announcement on December 1. This comes at a time when the Iranian government's efforts to enforce mandatory hijab over the past two years have also been fruitless. On the other hand, the repression of women under the pretext of mandatory hijab by the Islamic Republic has led to widespread international criticism.