According to media reports, after a protest against the headscarf requirement in Iran, an engineer was sentenced to 74 lashes. As the Norway-based human rights organization Hengaw announced on Saturday, the sentence was suspended for five years.
Seynab Kasemi attracted a lot of attention in February for demonstratively throwing her headscarf to the ground during a speech during an event. Video footage of the action was widely shared on the Internet. The woman had protested against an engineering association’s decision not to allow her to run for board elections because of an ill-fitting headscarf.
Since the death of the Iranian Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini in police custody around a year ago, many women in the country’s major cities have ignored the obligation to wear a headscarf in protest against the Islamic system of rule. Amini was arrested because she was said to have violated the prevailing dress code.
