The war ends, but not the violence against women. While the world focuses its attention on the signing of the memorandum of understanding between the United States and the United States, which puts an end to the war that began in February, a court in the Iranian city of Qom has sentenced the singer Parastu Ahmadi, along with eight other musicians, to 74 lashes, a two-year ban on leaving the country and another two years on artistic activities for singing without wearing a veil in a concert broadcast on YouTube.
The court has convicted the defendants – including eight members of the production team and musicians who participated in a concert recorded on December 11, 2024, which has almost three million views on YouTube – on charges such as “offending public morals” by violating Islamic norms, as well as for “producing, sending, distributing and publishing” “vulgar” and “immoral” content.
In December 2024, Ahmadi and several of his musicians gave a symbolic concert behind closed doors in a caravanserai – a kind of caravan shelter typical of the region – in Deir Gachin, in Qom, which lasted about half an hour. The performance was broadcast live on their YouTube channel.
The subsequent publication of the concert led to the opening of a legal case against him. The Tehran Prosecutor’s Office formally charged the singer at the end of December, although after being arrested she was released on bail with the rest of the co-accused, as reported by the NGO HRANA.
The name of the performance video, ‘An imaginary concert’, refers to the prohibition of female artists from singing solo in front of an audience in . The singer appears singing alone, with her hair uncovered and dressed in a black strapless dress.
Ahmadi, born in 1997, graduated in film direction from Soore University in Tehran. She began to be known for reinterpreting a patriotic song during the anti-government protests of 2022 after the death of the young Mahsa Amini in police custody for not wearing her veil correctly.
