Two residents of Azerbaijan were arrested after criticizing the hijab restrictions.

A resident of Nakhchivan, Gudrat Abdullayev, was arrested for 25 days after posting a video criticizing the restrictions on wearing hijabs in schools, while 29-year-old resident of the Absheron district, Rafael Huseynzade, received 30 days of arrest for writing a protest against the hijab ban on a school building.

As reported by "Caucasian Knot", earlier, users of the network debated the justification for the restriction on wearing hijabs in schools in Azerbaijan. Some of them stated that the ban on wearing hijabs in schools corresponds to the secular nature of education, while other commentators pointed out that the restrictions violate freedom of religion and deprive schoolgirls of the opportunity to attend classes.

Gudrat Abdullayev, a resident of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, was detained on the morning of October 7 in Nakhchivan, his mother Antiga Abdullayeva reported. Her son is engaged in private transportation, and she learned about his detention after friends of Abdullayev brought his car home.

"By the evening of October 7, it became clear that Gudrat was taken due to a video related to hijabs posted on TikTok. Gudrat was arrested for 25 days, but I do not know what administrative offense he was charged with," she told a correspondent of "Caucasian Knot".

After his arrest, Abdullayev called home once, reported that he was "fine," and asked to send him a change of clothes, his mother said.

A resident of the village of Mahammadi in the Absheron district, Rafael Huseynzade, was detained on October 11 after he wrote the slogan "Freedom to the hijab!" on the building of a local school, his father Fizuli Guseynov reported.

"Rafael is a young man with an active civic position. He was negatively affected by the fact that girls in hijabs would not be allowed into schools. On the night of October 11, he wrote on the building of a local school in Mahammadi, 'Freedom to the hijab!'. He took a photo of it and spread it on social media, and in the morning he was taken from home. The police said they would take an explanation and let him go. But that did not happen. He was taken to the Absheron court, which sentenced him to 30 days of administrative arrest. All this is verbal information; I have not yet seen the court's decision and do not know what offense Rafael was charged with," he told a correspondent of "Caucasian Knot".

After the court, Huseynzade was placed in a detention center in the Binagadi district, his father reported. According to him, his son is being held in a basement under poor conditions.

"There, Rafael is kept in a basement. The conditions are very poor, it is hard to breathe there. I myself was held there at one time after solitary protests," Guseynov said, adding that his son had been arrested before after protests.

"Caucasian Knot" does not yet have a comment from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan.

Recall that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan previously reported the detention of 37 people after protests against the restrictions on wearing hijabs in schools, while activists reported more than 200 detained. In Baku, the car of a school director was set on fire, and four more cars burned in the Absheron district. The day before, schoolgirls in hijabs were not allowed to attend classes in several schools in Baku, after which schoolchildren held protests and conducted classes on the street; these events were preceded by a tightening of requirements for school clothing.