Iranian singer Shervin Hajipour has been charged with two counts of anti-government propaganda and incitement to violence for his song “Baraye” (which means “for” or “for” in Farsi) which has become the anthem of the protests. unleashed in Iran by the death of Mahsa Amini after being arrested by the morality police.
In addition to accusations of anti-government propaganda and incitement to violence, a court has banned Hajipour from leaving the country for six months, said his lawyer, Majid Kaveh, according to the Iran Front Page on Tuesday.
The artist was arrested and has now been released on bail for a week, but until now the accusations he faces had not been reported.
The singer was arrested in late September after posting on Instagram the song “Baraye” made up of tweets posted by Iranians about Amini’s death on September 16, after being detained for improperly wearing the veil. Each verse of the song begins with the word “baraye”.
read also
The theme has become the anthem of the protests ever since and reached 40 million views on the singer’s Instagram account alone, despite the restrictions that the authorities have imposed on the internet. Which makes it the most viral song in the history of Iran.
“For every time we were afraid to kiss our lover in the street”, read the lyrics of the song, which according to the court incites violence and whose refrain is “Woman, life, freedom”, the slogan that resonates in Iran since 25 days.
The song’s success could even land it at the Grammys. A campaign on TikTok urging users to nominate the anthem for one of the Recording Academy’s new special merit awards – which honors a song dedicated to social change – has received 95,000 requests, more than 83% of the 115,000 nominations proposed for the award, the Academy said.
read also
“This song has broken into Persian social media tonight. Many of us have cried listening to it over and over again. Artist Shervin Hajipour has summed up the deep sadness and national pain that Iranians have been feeling for decades, culminating in the #MahsaAmini tragedy,” said BBC correspondent Bahman Kalbasi.
“The best way to understand Iran’s uprising is not a book or an essay, but Shervin Hajipour’s ‘Baraye,’” wrote Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment think tank.
In his first public statements after his release, Hajipour denied this weekend belonging to “any movement or organization outside the country” and assured that the song was intended to “express solidarity with the people.”
The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, and the President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisí, have accused foreign countries of being behind the protests, in particular they have pointed to a “conspiracy” between the United States and Israel, and it has also been pointed out to some European countries.
The Persian country has been experiencing protests since the death of Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, on September 16 after being arrested by the morality police accused of wearing the veil incorrectly, one of the pillars of the theocracy established by Ayatollah Ruholá Khomeiní in 1979.
The protests have mutated from large mobilizations with women burning veils strongly repressed by the security forces, to protests in universities and even in schools in which the girls take off their veils and protest in front of the directors of the center.
We wish to thank the author of this article for this awesome web content
Iran persecutes the singer of the anthem of the protests