Amnesty International issued a statement on January 24, 2018, calling on Iranian authorities to “immediately and unconditionally release” a young woman who removed her shawl in public on December 27, 2017, and waved it on a stick while standing on a concrete structure in a busy district (Enghelab Square) in downtown Tehran.
According to three eyewitnesses, the State Security forces arrested this woman and took her to a nearby detention center known as Police Station 148. There has been no news of her since and her name has not been reliably determined.
Former political prisoner and lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh independently researched this matter and declared that the woman was 31 years ol and had a 19-month-old baby.
Amnesty International urged the Iranian regime to end the persecution of women who speak out against compulsory veiling, and abolish this “discriminatory and humiliating” practice which has violated women’s rights in Iran for decades, including their rights to non-discrimination, freedom of belief and religion, freedom of expression, and protection from arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
On the same day, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, visited the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to seek support for the immediate release of all the prisoners of the Iranian uprising who are presently detained under torture. She demanded that the Iranian regime guarantee freedom of speech and assembly, and abolish repression of women and enforcement of the compulsory veil.