Iranian civil rights activist gets prison for taking off hijab in public
Iranian civil rights activist Saba Kord Afshari has been sentenced to 24 years behind bars, including a 15-year term for taking off her hijab in public — an act that authorities say promoted “corruption and prostitution.”
Afshari, 20, was handed the sentence by Tehran’s Revolutionary Court on Tuesday — after standing trial last week on charges of “spreading corruption and prostitution by taking off her hijab and walking without a veil,” “spreading propaganda against the state,” and “assembly and collusion,” the Iran Human Rights Monitor reported.
Her sentences were increased by one-half because of “numerous charges and previous records,” according to the report.
Both Afshari and her mother, Raheleh Ahmadi, were involved in White Wednesday protests, in which girls and women remove their compulsory hijabs and reveal their hair in public, the Daily Mail reported.
The duo often posted videos of themselves walking around the capital city without their headscarves — in an effort to encourage other women to leave their hijabs at home, according to the report.
Authorities allegedly pressured Afshari to make confessions on video — but she vehemently refused, according to the Monitor.
So the Intelligence Ministry took her mother into custody to further coerce her into making false confessions, according to the report.
Afshari was first arrested during a protest rally in early August last year, and ultimately ended up in the Evin women’s prison, the outlet reported.
After that arrest, Afshari, among other detainees, posted an online message about their experience and used a cellphone to call for help from inside a state security force van, according to the report.
Afshari was granted amnesty and released in February, with only two months left until the end of her sentence — an act that she and another activist said was only a spectacle by government officials, the outlet reported.
“When I saw the situation of prisons closely … I came to the conclusion that we in Iran only have the name of human rights,” Afshari told the women’s committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran at the time. “In fact, in Iran, there are no rights for humans, let alone respecting human rights in the prisons.”
After her release, she continued to protest against human rights abuses under the Iranian regime, and was arrested again in early June. She ended up back at the same prison.
Shima Babaii, Mojgan Lali and Shaghayegh Mahaki — also women’s rights activists — were jailed as well, according to the Daily Mail.
They face six years each for “association and collusion against national security” and “propaganda against the state.”
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