Five young Iranian ladies who filmed themselves dancing without headscarves to Rema’s Afrobeat song ‘Calm Down’ have allegedly been arrested for violating dress codes.
On Tuesday, the women were spotted in the viral video on TikTok and other social media channels dancing with bare midriffs beneath highrises in the Tehran residential district of Ekbatan and slightly showing their stomachs.
Rema identified as Divine Ikubor also retweeted the video with the caption: ’To all the beautiful women who are fighting for a better world, I’m inspired by you, I sing for you and I dream with you.’
Activists from the Ekbatan area, first posted the video on Telegram and Twitter, claiming that authorities had been asking residents in the area if they knew the women.
Times of Israel has now reported that the young women have been arrested, detained and forced into confessing by Iran’s authorities in which they expressed regret.
This video of Iranian girls in Tehran’s Ekbatan neighbourhood dancing unveiled to the song Calm Down by Rema and Selena Gomez spread widely around International Women’s Day on March 8.
In the Islamic Republic, it is illegal for women to dance in public as well as to not wear the Islamic headscarf.
Abolition of the obligatory headscarf rule has been one of the chief demands of the protest movement that erupted in September after the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the dress code.
Whether the women had been released was also not immediately clear.
