Jailed Singer on Hunger Strike in Iran After Received 100 Lashes
A Kurdish singer jailed in Iran has gone on hunger strike to protest his brutal and unfair sentence of two years of prison and 100 lashes.
Peyman Mirzazadeh, who is being held in Urmia Prison in northwestern Iran, began his hunger strike on Monday, July 29, one day after his flogging sentence was carried out in the 4th Branch of the Sentence Implementation Department.
The 110th Branch of the Urmia Public Court sentenced Mirzazadeh two years of prison and 80 lashes for “blasphemy” and another 20 lashes for “drinking alcohol”, which is forbidden under the mullahs’ Sharia law.
He is now injured, as one would expect, with swellings all over his body, particularly his back and feet. He is also in poor health overall.
Mirzazadeh was previously sentenced to two years of prison for “cooperating with a dissident group”.
In 2017, security forces arrested him on charges of “spreading propaganda against the state” by singing songs that showed support for a dissident group, He was denied access to a lawyer and sentenced to six months of prison.
Despite the fact that flogging is an internationally banned corporal punishment, Iran still practices it and dozens of other barbaric sentences, including amputation, stoning, and blinding. Why? Because the regime doesn’t consider it to be torture. Each year, hundreds of flogging sentences are issued by Iranian courts.
In Iran, over 100 “crimes” are punishable by flogging, with many journalists or civil rights activists being flogged for their peaceful work. The regime does not even take the person’s age into account, which means that children are routinely subjected to this and even executed, despite international condemnations.
Teachers’ rights activist Hamid Rahmati, a member of the Isfahan Teachers Association, was recently sentenced to 74 public lashes and three years in prison for holding a sit-in outside a government building to protest the widespread arrest of teacher activists.
The 103rd branch of the Shahreza Penal Court, in Isfahan Province, central Iran, for “disrupting public order by carrying out an abnormal act outside the Education Department building”.
In another case, an unknown number of people were sentenced to 74 lashes each because they did not observe the regime’s compulsory veil. They were on holiday in Mazandaran Province, northern Iran, where they were caught on camera without the forced veil on a boat in Lafour Lake. While the forced veil is only supposed to be enforced in public areas, the regime does not consider boats or cars to be private property in this case.
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