Anti-Hijab protests in Iran. AFP
New Delhi: Iranian authorities have arrested actress Soheila Golestani, who appeared without her headscarf in a protest video last week. Director Hamid Pourazari who was seen in the video has also been arrested.
The video showed a group of film and theatre figures standing silently without headscarves in solidarity with the ongoing protests in Iran.
Meanwhile, many Iranian workers went on strike and students boycotted classes Wednesday, rights groups said, as a former president publicly supported protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death.
Demonstrations have swept Iran for nearly three months since Amini died after her arrest by the notorious morality police in Tehran for an alleged breach of the country’s strict hijab dress code for women.
The authorities, who have struggled to contain the protests, describe them as “riots” fomented by Iran’s arch foe the United States and its allies, including Britain and Israel.
outh groups had called on people to take to the streets and turn the annual Students’ Day on Wednesday into a “day of terror for the state”.
Many shops were shuttered and youths were seen marching and chanting protest slogans across the country, at times defying a heavy security presence, in videos posted online by activists and rights groups.
“Be afraid, be afraid, we are all together,” students were heard shouting in a message aimed at the government, at Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran, in a video published by the social media monitor 1500tasvir.
Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) shared videos of shops closed in Tehran, Qazvin west of the capital, the northern city of Rasht, and Divandarreh in Amini’s home province of Kurdistan, among others.
BBC Persian published footage that appeared to show students protesting against the presence of ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi at Tehran University, with security forces pushing the demonstrators back.
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