Iran arrests eight for ‘obscene’ music videos

Arrests come days after more than 30 students who partied at a graduation ceremony were arrested and given 99 lashes

TEHRAN:

Iran has arrested eight people involved in producing "obscene" music videos, Tehran prosecutor general Abbas Jafarabadi told the judiciary's news agency Mizan Online on Saturday.

"Eight people producing obscene music videos, whose clips were broadcast on a famous anti-revolutionary television channel, were arrested in Tehran last week," he said.

Their charges will be reviewed by the special court of culture and media, he added.

Dozens of Farsi-language television channels are broadcast on satellite, all based outside Iran. Some air news programmes while others show only music videos, television series and movies.

Some entertainment channels have become very popular in the country in recent years despite being banned inside the Islamic republic.

The arrests come only days after more than 30 students who partied at a graduation ceremony in northern Iran were arrested and given 99 lashes each for violating the Islamic republic's morality code.

On May 16, Iran announced the arrest of eight people for working in "un-Islamic" online modelling networks, particularly on the photosharing app Instagram.

Other such arrests were recently reported across Iran by local media.

The crackdown is increasing despite moderate President Hassan Rouhani's effort to allow greater social and cultural freedom.

The head of the Tehran police department announced in April the recruitment of 7,000 plainclothes police in the capital to fight against "immorality".

The officers are responsible for monitoring "noise, harassment of women and women's lack of Islamic veil inside cars," he said.