Iranian activist accounts claim they were arrested, detained for two days and forced to record a video apologizing, this time wearing the veil.
On March 8, International Women’s Day, a video posted on the TikTok social network shows five young women dancing to the world hit “Calm Down” in a residential area of Tehran.
On this video, they do not wear a veil, but a crop top revealing their bellies and dance in public. Three things that are forbidden in Iran. While this video has gone viral and has gone around the world, for the past few days the fate of these young women has been worrying.
apology video
On Tuesday, activist accounts claimed they were arrested, detained for two days, and forced to record a video expressing their regret.
According to them, the authorities would have gone to the district of Ekbatan, where the video was taken, in order to view the surveillance videos to identify the young women and find them.
The supposedly forced video shows four women, now veiled, taking turns apologizing. However, the authenticity of the video or the recording conditions could not be verified.
resistance symbol
As a mark of support, many Iranian women have posted videos on social networks where they reproduce this choreography on this same song, which has become a symbol of resistance.
The Nigerian rapper Rema, behind the song, also wanted to send a message to these women. “To all the beautiful women who fight for a better world, you are an inspiration, I sing for you and I dream with you”, he wrote in a tweet.
Iran has been shaken for six months by major demonstrations, harshly repressed, triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, 22 years old. This young Kurd had been arrested by the morality police for an alleged violation of the dress code for women.
Since then, the forms of mobilization have multiplied and diversified. “It is not a question of challenging the regime head-on with the slogan ‘Down with dictatorship’, but of expressing the body’s desire for freedom. There is an intimate intertwining between existential freedom and political freedom”, explains to franceinfo Farhad Khosrokhavar, sociologist and director of studies emeritus at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS).
Last January, a couple of influencers were sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison by the Revolutionary Court of Tehran for posting a video of them dancing in the center of the capital.
