An Iranian couple was sentenced to more than ten years in prison for dancing in a viral video that enraged the Islamic state’s ruling regime.
Astiyazh Haghighi, 21, and her fiance Amir Mohammad Ahmad, 22, were seen in the video taking a romantic twirl in front of Tehran’s main landmark, the Azadi Tower.
They were apprehended in early November because women are not permitted to dance in public in Iran, let alone with a man, according to Agence France-Presse.
Haghighi also appeared in the video without a headscarf, in solidarity with protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, in September after her arrest for not wearing a hijab.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Haghighi and her boyfriend were sentenced to 10 1/2 years in prison by a revolutionary court in Tehran this week.
The couple, who are both well-known on Instagram, were found guilty of “encouraging corruption and public prostitution” as well as “gathering with the intent to disrupt national security,” according to the court.
According to reports, they were also prohibited from using the internet or leaving Iran.
Sources close to their families said they’d been deprived of lawyers during the court proceedings, AFP said.
Haghighi is reportedly in the notorious Qarchak prison for women outside Tehran, whose conditions are regularly condemned by activists, AFP said.
It was just the latest crackdown on those protesting the regime’s brutality against women that has seen at least 14,000 arrests, according to the United Nations
Just a few months into the brutal crackdown on protests, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk declared that Iran was “now in a full-fledged human rights crisis.”
Protests under the hashtag #WomanLifeFreedom began in September, when Amini died in the custody of morality officers who had arrested her for “inappropriate attire.”
Authorities claim she had a heart attack after being taken to a station to be “educated,” but her family claims she had no heart problems and was covered in bruises.
So far, hundreds of people have been killed in the unrest, with some protesters being executed, and thousands more have been arrested, including high-profile journalists and Iranian personalities.
Four years after the 1979 revolution established the Islamic Republic of Iran, the hijab became compulsory.
source:ghanaianexpress.com
