Middle East Iran executes political activist for stirring up 2017 protests
She first claimed to be the
Iranian Angelina Jolie
.
Then, encouraged by the tens of thousands of followers who cheered - and taunted - her daily on Instagram, the only accessible global social network in Iran, 19-year-old Fatemé Gishvand embarked on a dangerous drift that led her to modify her body to the extreme.
The rigid Iranian religious authorities, increasingly suspicious of the new batch of local influencers, have punished this attitude with a decade behind bars.
Gishvand, detained for a year, and who according to local sources contracted Covid-19 in captivity, had ended up accepting from his followers the jocular nickname of
Sahar Tabar
(Ax).
It was an allusion to the multiple scalpel cuts - and in some cases Photoshop - to which he gradually resorted that greatly modified his appearance, until he ended up boasting of resembling the famous female Tim Burton animation character.
The Tehran Prosecutor's Office imposed a battery of charges on him that included blasphemy, incitement to violence, enrichment with illicit methods and incitement of youth to corruption.
In a climate of pressure on
celebrities
with hundreds of thousands of followers - Sahar Tabar had about 486,000 - some of whom were forced to cease their activity, the Moral Crimes Court took the case, although it later referred it to a Revolutionary Court.
Shortly after her arrest, the young woman appeared on public television taking heartfelt responsibility for her performance.
An act of public contrition not exempt from internal criticism.
The program complemented Fatemé's confession by inviting a psychologist to address the girl's condition, although she also described the accused as a
"victim of an abnormal personality and her mental state"
who sought "vulgarity" on social networks.
Her lawyer has used in her defense the young woman's medical history, which includes a series of visits to psychiatric centers, to argue that the sentence is excessive.
Since the sentence is appealable, and Fatemé herself has acknowledged that she expects full forgiveness, she herself has not wanted to detail exactly what charges she has been convicted of.
It has specified that, of four charges, two have been lifted.
The condemned woman had admitted having undergone around 50 cosmetic surgery operations in
order to look like her idols.
In Iran, cosmetic surgery, particularly nasal septum reduction, is a first-order operation that transcends aesthetics to achieve the rank of distinctive social class.
It is not unusual that, under the repetitive epithet that the Persian nose is bulky, many young women from the middle class undergo cosmetic surgery as soon as they can afford it.
Announced in the same week that a political activist was hanged for inciting the 2017 economic unrest, and that two young activists have been sentenced to 15 years in prison in total, according to the
Etemed
newspaper
, for "collaborating with the US government. against the Islamic Republic on women's and family issues, "the conviction of Fatemé Gisvand has made people uncomfortable on social media, a speaker on behalf of Iranian society, critical of the objectives of the authorities in time of sanctions.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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