Iranian Woman Whipped for Not Wearing Hijab

Authorities in Iran have whipped a woman 74 times and ordered her to pay a fine for refusing to wear a head covering in public. 

"The convicted, Roya Heshmati, encouraged permissiveness (by appearing) disgracefully in busy public places in Tehran," the judiciary's Mizan Online website said on January 6.

"Her penalty of 74 strokes of the lash was carried out in accordance with the law and with sharia," and "for violating public morals," it added.

Writing on her now-locked social media page, Heshmati said that she was beaten across her back, legs and buttocks in a dank room she likened to a medieval torture chamber.

But she remained defiant in the courtroom even after her ordeal. 

“I threw off my scarf at the courtroom entrance. The [female agent] asked me to wear the headscarf. I didn't stop and she pulled it over my head again,” she wrote.

The brutal punishment triggered an uproar on social media, with prominent Iranian journalist and social activist Abbas Abdi saying: “These lashes did not just come down on the body of one woman, they hit all those who dream of a life with normal freedoms alongside each other.”

“Enough is enough. Don't disgust the society any more than this,” he added.

The Norway-based human rights organization Hengaw identified Heshmati as a 33-year-old woman of Kurdish origins.

Her lawyer Maziar Tatai told the reformist Shargh daily that she was arrested in April for “publishing a photo on social media without wearing a headscarf.” 

Besides being sentenced to flogging, the woman was ordered to pay a fine of 12 million rials (around $25) for “not wearing the Muslim veil in public,” the lawyer said. 

All women in Iran are required by law to cover their neck and head, and officials have increasingly cracked down on those defying the rule after the practice surged during nationwide anti-government protests that erupted in 2022.