Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi has reportedly been sentenced to 74 lashes for singing without wearing a hijab, according to rights activists.
Ahmadi and eight members of a production team performed a concert in 2024 that was livestreamed on her YouTube channel. She sang the historic patriotic anthem “Az Khoon-e Javanan-e Vatan” (“From the Blood of the Youth of the Homeland”), and the video—known as the “Caravanserai Concert”—has since gone viral.
Court Ruling Details
According to rights activists, the criminal court of Qom province sentenced Ahmadi and several musicians to flogging, a two-year ban on leaving the country, and a two-year ban on engaging in artistic activities.
The ruling has yet to be published by the official judiciary news agency. However, court documents seen by lawyers and rights groups reportedly state that the charges include “offending public decency” through the production and publication of “vulgar and immoral content” online.
Human Rights Activists Say Iran’s Conditions Have Not Changed
Human rights activists say Ahmadi’s sentencing demonstrates that the situation in Iran has not changed.
Bahar Ghandehari, director of advocacy at the U.S.-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, said Ahmadi’s punishment of 74 lashes “is yet another reminder that human rights conditions in Iran have not changed, despite the Iranian authorities’ wartime propaganda campaign aimed at improving their image.”
She added that the contrast between official imagery and the prosecution of artists exposes “the gap between the regime’s propaganda and reality.”
Professor Fatemeh Shams: Peace Requires Justice for Women
Reacting to the news, Fatemeh Shams, a professor of Persian Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote on X:
“If you label this blatant violence with any name other than ‘crime against humanity’; if, in the midst of such an overt and undeniable battle against women, you speak of ‘peace’ but fail to hear the voices of the victims; if you pit ‘national interests’ against freedom, justice, human dignity, and the right to life; and if you call yourself ‘anti-war’ but remain silent in the face of a war that rages every day against women, girls, and political prisoners, then you have remained neither faithful to the truth nor to justice.”
Shams added: “Peace is not merely the silencing of missile sounds or the subsiding of bombardment flames. Peace finds meaning only when the bodies of women and innocent protesters are no longer fields for unrestrained violence; when whips, torture, and nooses are no longer tools of governance.”
She concluded: “True and lasting peace becomes possible only when no woman is branded a criminal for working, studying, singing, or choosing her own lifestyle; and when no innocent human is consigned to dark prison cells and gallows for the crime of protesting, demanding justice, or expressing an opinion.”