Narges Hosseini, one of the anti-forced hijab activists known as the “Women of Revolution Street” who attained global fame in 2018, has been arrested and is being held in Kashan Prison.
The 33-year-old was detained on Wednesday and managed to tell her family her whereabouts in a call from the prison in Isfahan province today.
The family began to worry when she did not come home from work on Wednesday and filed a missing persons report at the police station. Narges, they said, is apparently not being held for any particular reason but on the orders of the public prosecutor.
In January 2018, Narges became the second in a series of young women who took a public stand against the regime’s misonynist veiling policy. Each took off a white headscarf and dangled it before her on a public thoroughfare in Tehran.
Narges was arrested minutes into her protest and later sentenced to three months in prison on charges of “encouraging prostitution” and “non-observance of hijab”.
The first woman to protest in this way was Vida Movahed, who stood on top of a utility box in Tehran’s Enghelab (Revolution) Street to protest – hence the group’s name.
In the last five years, the Islamic Republic has issued a total of at least 92 years’ prison time to women who opposed mandatory hijab in various forms.
Narges is among tens of known activists in Iran to have been arbitrarily detained in the past week, since popular protests erupted following the death of Mahsa Amini. On Thursday Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei confirmed a policy of “preventative detentions” was in force in the country.
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