Students across Azerbaijan boycotted classes and protested outside their schools on Monday, October 12, after girls wearing the hijab were turned away under new dress rules. The Interior Ministry said police arrested 37 people in Baku, and users reported that Instagram and TikTok stopped working the same morning.
The boycotts began on October 9 at School No. 69 in Baku’s Balakhany settlement, where students held a poster reading “Hijab is not an obstacle to education!” Caucasian Knot reported. Meydan TV and JAMnews reported a boycott at a school in Mollaoba village in Masally district.
On Monday, Caucasian Knot, citing rights activist Arzu Abdulla, reported protests outside at least 4 schools across Baku, including in Nardaran, Binagadi and Baladjary. Meydan TV posted video of a crowd of students outside a school chanting “Freedom to the hijab!”
The state-aligned agency APA reported on Monday that students and teachers who broke the dress rules at School No. 138 in Baku’s Khatai district were not admitted to classes. At School No. 152, APA said, such students were taken to a separate room for talks with the school psychologist and a doctor before being let into class.
JAMnews reported girls being turned away in Sumgait and Jalilabad, and said teachers in Sumgait told Toplum TV that some schools demanded they remove their headscarves or resign. “[The hijab] is a personal choice, and if one day I want to take it off, that should be my choice too,” teacher Zahra Hasanova told Al Jazeera.
The rules come from Cabinet of Ministers Decision No. 309, adopted September 21, which bars state school students from wearing clothing that breaks the uniform or conflicts with the secular character of education, without naming the hijab. A dress code for teachers followed on October 6, after Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev approved an amendment in July adding secularism to the Law on General Education. Lawmaker Jeyhun Mammadov said the rules aim to remove religious, ethnic and socioeconomic differences between students.
The Interior Ministry said a group in Baku confronted school staff, damaged state schools and tried to disrupt traffic. It said police opened a criminal case under Article 233 of the Criminal Code for breaching public order, but did not name the schools, the people arrested or what was damaged. Similar restrictions in 2010 to 2012 also set off protests that ended in arrests, AFP reported.
APA and Trend reported on Monday that a school director’s car was set on fire in Baku’s Garadagh district while children were nearby. No one was hurt, and neither agency named a suspect or tied the fire to the protests. The pro-government site Publika.az blamed it on a “sabotage plan prepared in Qom” without naming anyone or offering evidence.
Users told Meydan TV, Radio Azadliq and OC Media that Instagram and TikTok worked only through a VPN, and monitoring services logged complaints from Azerbaijan but no global outage. Authorities, Meta and TikTok have not commented. Azerbaijan blocked TikTok in September 2022, during its attack on Armenia’s sovereign territory, and on September 19, 2023, the day it launched the offensive that ethnically cleansed Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and forcibly displaced 120,000 Armenians.
Azerbaijani officials and pro-government groups have blamed outside forces. On October 11, the National NGO Forum said “information attacks have been observed on internet resources in Iran and other foreign countries” promoting “a state system based on the principles of Sharia.” On Monday evening, the state Media and Broadcasting Council said a coordinated social media campaign run from abroad was creating a false picture of mass discontent, but like the forum, it named no country and offered no evidence.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an told the UN General Assembly in September that school headscarf bans in “some countries” are “an attack on women’s most basic rights,” without naming any. Middle East Eye reported that Aliyev told his party congress on October 2, “Everyone should know their place; they should not interfere in our affairs.” Turkish officials told the outlet the dispute was “a misunderstanding” and that Erdo?an had meant France and Austria.
Theologian Abgül Suleymanov was given 30 days of detention in September on a charge of disobeying police. His family ties the charge to a Facebook post in which he wrote, “If they dare to ban schoolgirls from studying while wearing the hijab, I will choose prison and die there.” Jailed journalist Polad Aslanov began a hunger strike against the restrictions last week, OC Media reported.
Azerbaijan unlawfully holds 19 Armenians in Baku, including prisoners of war. On October 8, the European Parliament voted 492 to 23 for a resolution that counts more than 300 political prisoners in Azerbaijan, Armenians among them, and calls for their release.
This is a developing story, and Zartonk will update it as more is confirmed.
