Woman in Iran gets 74 lashes for ‘public morals’ violation for not covering her head

Iranian authorities have whipped a woman 74 times for “violating public morals” and fined her for not covering her head, the judiciary said.

“The convicted, Roya Heshmati, encouraged permissiveness [by appearing] disgracefully in busy public places in Tehran,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website said late on Saturday.

“Her penalty of 74 strokes of the lash was carried out in accordance with the law and with sharia,” and “for violating public morals,” Mizan said.

All women in Iran have been required by law to cover their neck and head since shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Whippings for breaching the dress code are uncommon in Iran, although officials have increasingly cracked down on those defying the rules after the practice surged during anti-government protests that began in late 2022.

Those protests were triggered by the September 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd arrested for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.

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Iranian police set up cameras in public sites to identify women defying compulsory dress code

Iranian police set up cameras in public sites to identify women defying compulsory dress code

During the protests, female demonstrators cast off their headscarves or even burned them. Other women also began increasingly to flout the dress code, leading to a crackdown.