Concern grew in the Islamic Republic of Iran on Tuesday
after five young Iranian women filmed themselves dancing to a song by Selena
Gomez without wearing headscarves (hijab) in a viral TikTok video.
Iranian authorities arrested the five teenage women and
coerced them into filming a video repenting their actions, highlighting that
dancing in public is illegal in Iran.
The teenage girls filmed a video of themselves dancing to
"Calm Down" by Selena Gomez and Nigerian singer Rema in front of a
tower block in Tehran, the capital of Iran. They recorded the video on March 8
— International Women's Day — and posted it on TikTok. In the video, these
women were wearing crop tops and none were wearing hijabs.
According to the Italian newspaper la Repubblica, the TikTok
video went viral on social media. Subsequently, Iranian police used CCTV
footage of the incident and interrogated security guards at the tower block to
find the teenagers. The women reportedly shot the video in the Tehran
residential district of Ekbatan.
On Tuesday, human rights and women rights activists said
that the teenage women had been detained and forced into making a video of
apology. The activists from the Ekbatan area said that Iranian authorities had
asked residents in the area if they knew these women. Later on, the authorities
arrested these women.
According to Fox News, Iranian authorities forced the young
girls to record a second video of themselves repenting, with their heads
covered with Hijabs.
Abolition of the compulsory headscarf (hijab) rule has been
one of the main demands of the protest movement that erupted in September 2022
after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman, in police
custody. She had been arrested by the country’s morality police for allegedly violating
the dress code and wearing a loose hijab.