The Iranian singer published a thirty-minute concert on Wednesday on her YouTube channel in which she appears revealed, in a long black dress revealing her shoulders. A direct violation of Sharia law.
A new figure of resistance in Iran. An unprecedented event in the history of the Iranian Islamic Republic, in place for 45 years, a young woman went on stage without a hijab, for a thirty-minute concert broadcast on social networks. Parastoo Ahmadi, 27, sang to protest the law on “promotion of the culture of chastity and hijab”which was to come into force on Friday December 13 after being adopted by Parliament. According to RFI, its promulgation was finally canceled today by the president himself, who wishes to avoid a tearing apart of society. Another bill should be made by the government in the coming months.
On Wednesday, December 11, Parastoo Ahmadi shared online a video of herself revealed singing, hailed by many as a “incredible act of courage” and a “historic gesture”. In three days, the video exceeded more than 1.3 million views on YouTube and was shared dozens of times on Instagram. “I am Parastoo, a girl who wants to sing for the people she loves,” writes the young woman in the caption of the extract to justify her action. “It’s a right I couldn’t give up – to sing for the country I love so passionately”.
Challenge the Islamic Republic
Parastoo Ahmadi performs several famous Iranian songs, accompanied by four men who appear to be members of his group, in the dim light of the patio of a traditional caravanserai whose name we do not know and visibly without an audience. Bare head and shoulders, in a black evening dress, made-up, with a necklace in the shape of a map of Iran around her neck, she defies the Islamic Republic which requires women to cover their heads and necks and forbids them from singing. alone in public since 1979.
Parastoo Ahmadi sings seven songs in this pre-recorded concert on an unknown date and location. One of them is the iconic Az Khoone Javanane Vatan (“From the blood of the youth of the nation”), song of the Woman, Life, Liberty movement. Another song says in particular that“you have to weather storms without taking your life into account”.
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Although her Wednesday performance is the first concert she has recorded, Parastoo Ahmadi is not unknown to the Iranian public. Born in 1997 in Nowshahr, in northern Iran, she graduated in directing from Sooreh University. She began her career as a singer by publishing covers of piano songs on her Instagram account which has nearly 600,000 subscribers. Tens of thousands of people began following his account after the video was published on Wednesday.
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Prosecutions opened
The young woman's militant commitment is not new. When the country was set ablaze in 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini, Parastoo Ahmadi had already defied the mullahs' regime by resuming the ballad Az Khoone Javanane Vatan of the Woman, Life, Liberty movement. She quickly had to delete the video, forced by the authorities who then summoned her and searched her home.
Less than twenty-four hours after the publication of the video on Wednesday, the Iranian judiciary announced the opening of a trial against Parastoo Ahmadi and the musicians who accompanied him. Without naming her, the Iranian justice news agency Mizan denounced a “band led by a female singer” having recorded “music without respecting legal and religious rules”. The authorities are “intervened and took appropriate measures, opening proceedings against the singer and the production», Specifies the Mizan agency.
