Azerbaijan's New Rules Ban Hijab-Wearing Girls from Schools, Protests Met with Arrests and Platform Restrictions

Azerbaijan's new school uniform regulations prohibit hijab-wearing girls from entering school campuses. According to Al Jazeera reports dated October 12, this regulation has triggered sustained protests by teachers and students, accompanied by simultaneous suppression through police detentions and social platform disruptions.

The report, citing relevant sources, indicates that dozens of people have been arrested during the demonstrations, but the specific numbers have not been publicly confirmed by officials. At the same time, users have reported service disruptions on multiple social media platforms, but which platforms are restricted and the extent of the impact remain unclear.

The new rules, citing "uniformity" as the administrative rationale, bring what should be personal and family choices regarding religious attire into the scope of administrative orders. In the South Caucasus region, where religious expression is already sensitive, regardless of whatever guise of "modernization" or "school appearance standardization" is invoked, blocking girls' daily religious markers outside the school gates constitutes an administrative erosion of minority basic rights. As for the specific legal basis and official explanation of this major educational policy, there is currently a lack of publicly available information — through what procedures and by what authorization the policy entered the execution phase should be subject to public scrutiny.

Teachers and students taking to the streets represent a legitimate response to administrative coercion. Yet the authorities' response points toward detentions and platform shutdowns: tightening expression in public spaces, tightening connections in digital spaces. Although details such as the number of detentions and the scope of platform impact remain uncertain, the very direction of the response itself reveals the problem.