'Violating public morals': Iran flogs woman 74 times for posting photo without hijab
Iran hijab
In Iran, a woman was whipped 74 times for "violating public morals" by posting a photo with her head uncovered. The woman, identified as 33-year-old Roya Heshmati, was also fined for not covering her head, said the Iranian judiciary.
Encouraging permissiveness
On the Judiciary's Mizan online website, a statement posted late on Saturday (Jan 6) said: "The convicted, Roya Heshmati, encouraged permissiveness (by appearing) disgracefully in busy public places in Tehran."
"Her penalty of 74 strokes of the lash was carried out in accordance with the law and with sharia," and "for violating public morals," added Mizan, as reported by news agency AFP.
A Kurdish human rights organisation, Hengaw, has identified Heshmati as a woman of Kurdish origin, who is an outspoken critic of the Islamic regime's hijab law.
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Talking to Shargh daily, a popular reformist newspaper, Heshmati's lawyer Maziar Tatai said that the woman was arrested in April "for publishing a photo on social media without wearing a headscarf."
She was also ordered to pay a fine of 12 million rials (around $285) for "not wearing the Muslim veil in public".
Tatai, as per Entekhab, also alleged that the charges against Heshmati were changed several times. Throughout the process at different times, she was charged with "propaganda against the regime," "being in the streets without a religious hijab," "harming public modesty," "producing vulgar content," and "encouraging people to commit corruption".
'I would not yield'
The defiant woman, as per The Jerusalem Post, removed her hijab upon entering the court where her flogging was to take place.
Even though her lawyer and an employee cautioned her and asked her to don the headscarf "to avoid trouble," Heshmati said that she "came specifically for the lashes, and I would not yield".
She was even ordered to put on the hijab by the officer who carried out her flogging. However, despite threats of more severe whipping and an additional 74 lashes, Heshamti refused to do so.
"I maintained my stance and did not wear the hijab," she said, as per an account of the flogging shared by Hengaw.
She described the room where she was flogged as a "fully equipped medieval torture chamber."
(With inputs from agencies)
