Toomaj Salehi, one of Iran's most prominent rappers, has hit out at the treatment of three fellow artists whom Iranian police videos showed shirtless with shaved heads giving what appeared to be forced confessions on alleged crimes.
Police broadcast videos of Arash Sayyadi, Ashkan Shekariyan-Moghadam and Rassam Sohrabi confessing to "disrupting public order" and "rap dissing" online.
The rappers also directed their apologies to “security and judicial agents, the agents of the Second Base of the Intelligence Organization and the Tehran District 5 Prosecutor’s Office,” the video said.
Toomaj Salehi, who faced a death sentence during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protest movement but was later released, expressed abhorrence of the scene.
“The issue isn’t who these three are or what they did; the main question is who allowed those agents, after frightening and pressuring someone, to shave his head and force him to stand before a camera reading from a script?” Salehi posted on Instagram.
Rights groups accuse Iran uses forced confessions as a tool of repression, often broadcast on state television. The most recent case occurred in August, when coerced statements from Christian converts were aired.
Salehi also delivered forced confessions on Iranian state media in which he admitted inciting sedition and riots. He later denied the accusations in a YouTube video released in November 2023 after his release.
Arash Sayyadi, who goes by the stage name Eycin and Rassam Sohrabi have been subject to prior arrests, human rights website HRANA said, without elaborating. It offered no background information on Ashkan Shekariyan-Moghadam, known as Ashkan Leoo.
Iranian hip-hop faces severe censorship, repression, and arrests, which force some artists to record and distribute their music underground to avoid state scrutiny.
