Iranian officials detained three young female
dancers who had thousands of followers on Instagram. According to our Observers
in Iran, this is part of a wider crackdown-- in the past year, Iranian
authorities have prosecuted many other dancers, but because they were
lesser-known, their stories didn’t reach the media.
Sahra Afsharian, Sara Shariatmadari and Niloufar
Motiei are known for shuffle dancing, which is a club dance characterized by
repeatedly shuffling your feet inwards, then outwards. Each of them has tens of
thousands of followers on social media, as well as many students. On October 8,
state media YJC reported that these three dancers had been arrested and detained
in the notorious Qarchak Prison, located about 40 kilometres southeast of the
capital, Tehran. State media also reported that that many other dancers had also
been arrested and were being prosecuted for “obscene content
creation”.
We were not famous, so media didn't
mention us”
Ghazaleh is a 19-year-old Iranian dancer who
specialises in zumba and ballet. She used to live in Tabriz, a city in
northwestern Iran. When she was threatened with arrest a year ago, she left Iran
for Turkey. She now lives in a small Turkish city where she teaches zumba and
studies cinema at university. To protect her safety, FRANCE 24 is not revealing
her precise location.
I started dancing seriously when I was 15 and,
when I turned 17, I started sharing videos and photos of myself dancing on
Instagram. At the time, I really didn’t imagine that it could be dangerous
because a lot of other girls were doing it. Besides, my page isn’t public and I
only have about 2,000 followers. I had heard of a few people being arrested or
taken in for questioning by the authorities, but I wasn’t worried about it. The
arrests seemed random to me and I thought it was just a scare tactic to keep us
from doing what we love. Honestly, my only real fear was that my parents would
find out that I was sharing dance videos because they are very
conservative.
But suddenly, about a year ago, my world turned
upside down. That’s when Masih Alinejad [Editor’s note: an Iranian journalist
and anti-hijab activist based in Washington, DC] posted one of my videos on her
Instagram page. One of my friends had filmed me dancing in a park in Tabriz and
shared the video with Alinejad.
I don’t know how, but only a few minutes later, my
Instagram page was hacked and I lost access to it. A few days after that, police
called my school. They asked for my address and said they wanted to meet with me
and my parents. That was when my parents found out I that I had an Instagram
page and everything. My world became hell. My parents wanted me to stop dancing
and we fought a lot. However, in the end, when they saw that I wasn’t going to
give up, they helped me move to Turkey to avoid arrest.
“I will never go back to
Iran”
I’ve been living in a small city in Turkey for
several months now. I don’t have any contact with my parents anymore. My
story is not unique; I know a lot of other Iranians living here in Turkey who,
like me, also had to leave the country over the past year. All of them came to
the attention of the police in one way or another and the police came after
them. Some of them stopped dancing, others were arrested and some, like me, ran
away. However, none of us were as famous as the three dancers who everyone is
talking about right now, so people don’t know our stories.
Last year, the authorities also shut down three
gyms in Tabriz where we used to go to practice mostly hip hop and zumba
[Editor’s note: Many gyms in Iran organize “undercover” dance classes.
I really have no idea why the number of arrests
has increased and why the pressure has intensified since last year. Maybe Iran’s
government is trying to distract people’s attention from bigger issues like the
severe financial crisis shaking our country.
My current situation is difficult. The city where
I am living is very conservative and there is no dance club. I don’t have any
money because I lost the support of my family. However, I will never go back to
Iran.
This is not the first time that Iranian officials
have clamped down on social media influencers.
Earlier this year, officials went after Sahar
Tabar, who posted videos online impersonating the Tim Burton film “The Corpse
Bride”. Recently, Iranian state TV broadcast her “confessions”, where she
claimed she was a troubled child from a troubled family.
A similar situation occurred in July 2018 when
dancer Maedeh Jojabri, who had 600,000 followers online, was arrested and then
appeared in a state television documentary where she admitted to “immoral
behavior” in front of a public prosecutor.
The same month, authorities closed a popular
tourist site after visitors made a video of themselves dancing there.
