Iranian rights campaigner Melika Qaragozlu, 22, was found guilty of violating the nation’s mandatory hijab laws and was given a sentence of three years, eight months in prison and eight million tomans in fine, according to her attorney’s tweets.
After taking part in a national day of civil disobedience on July 12, activist Melika Qaragozlu, who was later detained, uploaded a video of herself on social media in which she was not donning the obligatory Islamic headscarf.
The Qaragozlu decision was rendered when Iran experienced significant unrest following the death of a 22-year-old woman in police detention for disobeying the hijab law.
On September 19, her attorney Mohammad Ali Kamfiruzi posted on Twitter that his client had recently received a sentence from the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran “for broadcasting a few seconds of a video on social media without a headscarf.”
Despite the forensic doctor’s confirmation that my client must be under the care of a specialist psychiatrist, he continued, “My client has several medical documents, and that was not taken into account in issuing the verdict.”
Qaragozlu is a multi-media journalist who studies at Allameh Tabataba’i University.
In Iran, women are required by law to wear the hijab
Since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, women have been compelled by law to dress modestly in “Islamic” attire.
In actuality, this entails that women must don a chador, an abaya that covers their entire body, or a headscarf and coat.
The Iranian morality police initiated a campaign against women who were allegedly not wearing the required hijab during one of the recent anti-hijab campaigns, which prompted opponents of the movement to call for action.
Following a wave of protests in which dozens of women removed their headscarves in public, the authorities strengthened their policies.
In a social media video that went viral in July, a lady was shown pleading for the release of her daughter in front of a morality police car. The veiled woman held on to the car long after it had started moving before swerving away as it picked up speed.
Masha Amini has become the face of the revolution in Iran.
Iranian women are protesting the police killing of Masha Amini by cutting their hair short and setting their hijabs on fire.
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