CNN
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Mehdi Yarrahi, an Iranian singer and musician known for his songs, is a musician known for his songs that encourage women to remove the hijab, and has been linked 74 times as part of his punishment to support the protests that swept the country, his lawyer said Wednesday.
The punishment was “fully and fully implemented,” his lawyer, Zahra Minoui, was arrested in August 2023 on a post by X. Yarrahi, 42, and sentenced to two years and eight months by the Tehran Revolutionary Court, and sentenced to 74 counts of frogging. He ultimately served one year of his sentence and was fined along with a fine.
Yarahi was accused of “releasing an illegal song that violates the morals and customs of Islamic society,” the state news agency IRNA said in 2023.
Whiplash is a form of heartbeat that includes a whip or rod, and is commonly administered to a person’s back.
He was taken into custody four days after releasing the famous song “Roosarito” (Farsi for “Your Headscarf”). The lyrics say, “Take off your scarf, the sun is set. Take off your scarf and let your hair go.”
“Don’t be afraid, my love! Laughter, protest to tears,” the lyrics add.
A month after Yarahi’s arrest, protests erupted throughout Iran, commemorating the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death.
Rights groups are furious at the Hijab Act and the cruel ways in which it is in place.
In December, Amnesty International said Iranian authorities had imposed new, harsh laws on veiling, including the threat of imposing death penalty, whiplash, prison conditions and other serious penalties to crush on ongoing resistance to forced veiling.
Other Iranian artists have been whipped as part of their writing, including acclaimed film director Mohammad Rasoulov, who was sentenced to eight years in prison last May and was sentenced to a national security crime whipping.
In 2015, two Iranian poets faced 99 eyelashes each to shake hands with people of the opposite sex. They were also sentenced for years in prison as a “sacred” humiliation in their writings, a decision condemned by freedom of expression activists.