November 4, 2024

Student Who Undressed to Protest Iran’s Repressive Dress Code Joins Other Dissidents Forced Into Psychiatric Centers

World Must Demand Her Immediate Release and Due Process Rights

Iran’s Use of Psychiatric Centers to Punish Dissidents Is Severe Violation of Law

November 4, 2024 – The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) is gravely concerned over the condition of a female student who was arrested outside her university in Iran and forcibly transferred to a psychiatric hospital after stripping to her undergarments in a protest against the country’s repressive mandatory dress code.

The forced transfer of peaceful protesters, dissidents, and political prisoners to psychiatric hospitals as tools of repression to delegitimize acts of protest and silence dissenting voices is a routine practice by the Islamic Republic and has been increasingly used since the eruption of the Women, Life, Freedom protests that erupted across Iran in 2022.

“Iranian authorities systematically use involuntary psychiatric hospitalization as a tool to suppress dissent, branding protesters as mentally unstable to undermine their credibility,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of CHRI.

“Authorities isolate the individual, intensify security pressures, and tightly control the narrative—blocking journalists and civil society members from independently investigating or reporting on the case,” Ghaemi added.

CHRI calls on the UN, governments, and medical and psychiatric associations around the world to demand that the Iranian authorities immediately:

Release the student and guarantee her full due process rights;
Cease the practice of forced psychiatric admission for dissidents, protesters, and political prisoners;
Respect the rights of the people of Iran to peacefully protest.

Videos circulating online on Saturday, November 2, 2024, show a young woman stripping to her undergarments at the entrance of Tehran’s Islamic Azad University Science and Research Campus after reportedly being harassed by campus security officers over her hijab.

Another video captures the moment when a group of plainclothes individuals swiftly surround her and forcibly push her into an unmarked vehicle. “Oh God, how many of them are attacking just one person?” a person is heard saying in the video.

Mohammad Ghorbani, spokesperson for Islamic Azad University, said that the student was taken to a psychiatric hospital. There has been no further information about her whereabouts or condition.

“Transferring individuals who participate in peaceful protests to psychiatric hospitals represents not only an act of arbitrary detention but also constitutes a form of kidnapping. This practice is a blatantly unlawful move to discredit activists by labeling them mentally unstable,” Ghaemi said.

Imprisoned human rights activist and Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi, who is being punished through a different tool the Islamic Republic uses to suppress peaceful dissent, namely the denial of critical medical care to political prisoners, commented on the arrest of the student: “The regime cannot force protesting women, who have made their bodies symbols of dissent and defiance against misogyny and tyranny, into retreat by labeling them as ‘mentally unstable,’ ‘sexually deviant,’ or ‘misled.’”

Forced Transfer to Psychiatric Centers Common Tactic, Especially with Women

Transferring prisoners and protesters to psychiatric hospitals has long been a common tactic employed by the security and judicial apparatus of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and in the aftermath of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, it has increasingly targeted women.

If an individual has not consented to hospitalization, this amounts to arbitrary detention and constitutes a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Iran is a signatory.

Iran’s own Guidelines for Special Situations in Rehabilitation and Treatment Centers for Psychiatric Patients also stipulate that if a person with acute mental health conditions has not been declared “incapacitated” by medical or judicial authorities, her/his personal consent is necessary to carry out any medical treatment.

International law strictly forbids forced psychiatric treatment without confirmation by a “qualified mental health practitioner” that such treatment is “urgently necessary in order to prevent immediate or imminent harm to the patient or to other persons.”

Past Cases of Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment of Dissidents

Melika Gharegozlou, a journalism student at Allameh Tabataba’i University, was arrested on October 2, 2022, and sentenced to over four years in prison for posting a video of herself without the state-mandated headscarf. On November 16, 2022, she was forcibly transferred to the Aminabad Psychiatric Hospital in Tehran against her consent and without informing her family or lawyer. There, she reported torture and began a hunger strike to protest her treatment.

In November 2023, a video emerged showing a young woman, Roya Zakeri, in Tabriz shouting “death to the dictator” after being harassed by morality police over her hijab. Shortly after, reports emerged indicating that she had been transferred to Tabriz Psychiatric Hospital.

“The Islamic Republic has tried to portray me as mentally ill; I am in complete physical and mental health,” Zakeri said in a video after her release on bail.

During the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, schoolchildren accused of participating in the nationwide demonstrations in Iran were detained in so-called “psychological centers” under the guise of reeducation. Authorities used this practice as a justification to abduct and unlawfully hold children who dared to join the protests.

In July 2023, three prominent Iranian actresses—Azadeh Samadi, Leila Bolukat, and Afsaneh Bayegan—were labeled as “mentally ill,” “anti-family,” and “antisocial” during their sentencing in a Tehran criminal court for defying the country’s mandatory hijab laws.

Bayegan was sentenced to mandatory bi-weekly therapy sessions for her refusal to wear the hijab in public, along with a two-year suspended prison sentence—leaving her at constant risk of imprisonment—and a two-year ban on social media and travel.

This prompted four leading psychiatry boards in Iran to issue a joint letter to judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, saying: “The diagnosis of mental disorders is within the competence of a psychiatrist, not a judge. Just as the diagnosis of other diseases is in the competence of doctors, not judges.”

Saman Yasin, a Kurdish rapper and outspoken critic who was arrested during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, was forcibly hospitalized in a psychiatric facility on July 23, 2023, just two days after releasing an audio message from prison in which he spoke about the injustices of his trial and the torture he was subjected to in detention.

Yasin was hospitalized at the Razi Psychiatric Hospital in southern Tehran, the same hospital where Sufi political prisoner Behnam Mahjoubi was tortured before dying in state custody.

Other political prisoners and detainees who’ve been subjected to unlawful and involuntary medical treatment over the past few years in Iranian state custody include: