PARIS (TIP): An Iranian singer was December 12 hailed as a hero by supporters but faced prosecution from the judiciary after giving an online concert not wearing the hijab in defiance of the dress code.
Parastoo Ahmadi streamed the online concert on her YouTube channel late on Wednesday. She wears no headscarf and is bare-shouldered in a long, flowing black dress.
The concert, whose date of filming was not immediately clear with no audience present, appears to have been shot inside Iran with Ahmadi and her three-person band, all men, playing outside on a stage in the grounds of a traditional caravanserai complex.
Under rules imposed after the 1979 Islamic revolution, women must cover their hair in public and are also not allowed to sing alone in public.
Ahmadi had built a wide following among Iranians for songs posted on her Instagram page, including audio clips and videos of ballads sung indoors without a headscarf supporting the 2022-2023 mass protests against the authorities.
This appears to be the first time however that she has recorded a full concert outside as opposed to the more intimate recitals filmed indoors.
A written message on the YouTube video before the concert starts says: “I am Parastoo, the girl who cannot remain silent and refuses to stop singing for the country she loves.”
She tells viewers to “listen to my voice in this imaginary concert and dream of a free and beautiful nation”.
Without naming Ahmadi, the Mizan news agency of the Iranian judiciary said Thursday “a group led by a female singer” had performed “music without observing legal and religious standards”.
The judiciary has “intervened and taken appropriate action, with a legal case filed against the singer and the production staff,” it added.
US-based dissident campaigner Masih Alinejad hailed the concert as “historic”, saying on social media that “her voice is a weapon against tyranny, her courage a song of defiance”.
Prominent commentator Karim Sadjadpour, a fellow with the Carnegie Endowment, described the concert as an “act of extraordinary courage” that marked “another crack in the foundations of Iran’s rotting theocracy”.
The streaming of the concert took place ahead of a new law expected to come into force on Friday that rights groups have warned will drastically increase the penalties on women deemed to have flouted the dress code.
Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday that women could even face the death penalty if convicted under the “Promotion of the Culture of Chastity and Hijab” law. (AFP)