Majid Tavakoli

Majid Tavakoli (Persian: مجید توکلی ‎‎; born 1986, Shiraz, Iran) is a prominent Iranian student leader, human rights activist and political prisoner. He is a member of the Islamic Students' Association at Tehran's Amirkabir University of Technology, where he studied shipbuilding. He has been arrested at least three times by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence — most recently on 7 December 2009, during the student protests over the disputed Presidential Election of 2009 — and is currently in prison. His arrest and imprisonment is the subject of a campaign of protest by Iranian men photographed wearing hijabs.

In 2006, he was imprisoned for 15 months for insulting religion and the country's leadership in student publications, an accusation he denies.

Tavakoli was arrested on 7 December 2009 after addressing a crowd at Amir Kabir University of Technology on National Student Day (one of many protests over the disputed June 2009 presidential election). After his arrest, semi-official new websites including Fars News and Raja News published pictures of Tavakoli dressed in women's clothing or "hijab," taken while he was in custody, claiming Tavakoli attempted to avoid arrest by dressing in "women's clothing".

According to human rights activists however, eyewitnesses present at the time of his arrest "have denied all the news published by pro-Ahmadinejad media", and stated he was forced to put on the hijab by security forces to discredit and ridicule him. In their report, Fars News Agency had compared Tavakkoli to Iranian ex-President Abolhassan Banisadr, who according to "an old allegation", dressed as a woman while escaping Iran.

In solidarity with Tavakoli, hundreds of Iranian men have posted pictures of themselves in Islamic hijab, on various websites, under the slogan, "Be a man". The campaign calls for an end to mistreatment of Iranian prisoners including Tavakoli. Some of the website's readers also call the campaign a gesture of solidarity with Iranian women, who are compelled by law in Iran to wear the hijab.

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