Nasrin Sotoudeh Sacrifices Family Visits To Protest Prosecutor’s Demand She Wear Full Hijab

Detained human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has given up her family visitation right in protest against a prosecutor’s demand that she receive visitors fully draped in a hijab.

“The prosecutor has sent a letter to me and my mother warning that if we don’t observe the hijab, we won’t be able to have visitation,” Mehraveh Khandan told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) after attempting to visit her mother in Tehran’s Evin Prison on September 16, 2018.  

Sotoudeh also refused to sign a written pledge stating she would wear the head-to-toe Islamic-style covering, called the “chador” in Farsi, which only shows the skin on a woman’s face and hands.

“After waiting in the visitation hall for half an hour, her cellmates told me that when my mother was asked to sign a pledge to fully observe the hijab, she objected and then protested by refusing to go to visitation and will not be making phone calls,” Khandan added.

Prior to her arrest, Sotoudeh, a prominent human rights attorney in Iran, served as the legal counsel for several women who had peacefully protested against the country’s compulsory hijab law by removing their own scarves in public.

Detained since June 3, 2018, Sotoudeh has been on a wet hunger strike for three weeks in protest against the trumped-up national security charges she is facing and the security forces’ harassment of her family and friends.

In mid-June, she threatened to completely remove her hijab in protest after security agents beat her supporters as they peacefully demanded her freedom outside the prison.

Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan—who had been publicizing case updates about his wife via his Facebook page—has also been detained since September 4 after being arrested by agents of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry.