frigidmagi
Dragon Death-Marine General
Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 9309
Location: Alone and unafraid
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 Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 6:33 pm Post subject: Australia concern for Iranian actress 'facing lashing' |
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BBC
| Quote: | Australia has expressed concern over reports that an Iranian actress has been sentenced to jail and 90 lashes for being in a film critical of Iran.
Marzieh Vafamehr starred in the 2009 Australian film My Tehran for Sale, about an actress whose work is banned.
Reports of her sentence appeared on an Iranian opposition website although authorities have not confirmed it.
Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd urged Iran "to protect the rights of all Iranians and foreign citizens".
"The Australian government condemns the use of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and is deeply concerned by reports that Marzieh Vafamehr has been sentenced to one year in jail and 90 lashes for her role in an Australian-produced film," a spokeswoman for Mr Rudd said in a statement.
Iranian website Kalameh.com, which carried the report of the sentence on Monday, said Ms Vafamehr's legal team was lodging an appeal.
The film's producers, Kate Croser and Julie Ryan, said they were "deeply shocked and appalled" by the reports.
They said they did not know details of the reported charges but said they believed they related to scenes in which Ms Vafamehr appears without a hijab headscarf.
Other reports suggest she was jailed because the film did not have the necessary permits.
But the film's Iranian-Australian director, Granaz Moussavi, said the accusations "have no grounds".
"All the documentation has been provided to the Iranian court to show that permits were in place for the production of the film," she said.
Correspondents say lashing sentences are not unusual in Iran but many are not carried out.
My Tehran for Sale premiered at the 2009 Adelaide Film Festival and has also been shown at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Global Lens programme at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
Although never intended for release in Iran, it is believed to have found its way on to the black market. |
90 Lashes? Good Lord, these are some tough movie critics.
Seriously this is completely overboard. To provide some context, in the Old Testament legal code, you ran the risk of being beaten to death with fucking rocks! That same legal code solemnly announced that it was a crime against God and Man to lash anyone more then 40 times and the penalty for that was... Well being beaten to death with rocks, they were consistent. The Old Testament Jews were so worried about this that they made additional laws saying any lashing should stop at 39, just to be sure you didn't go above 40.
Iran is punishing a women for having the audacity to appear without a head scarf in a movie and doing so with a punishment that a bronze age civilization would find excessive and overly brutal. That's... special, that takes talent!
Yeah... We've totally advanced as a species haven't we?
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Al Sadr must die!
 "it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken |
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