Iranian poets face lashes for shaking hands with opposite sex

Tehran, Oct 28: Two Iranian poets are facing 99 lashes each for shaking hands with people of the opposite ***** in one of the latest examples of harsh punishments meted out to writers and artists by Iran's judiciary, the media reported on Wednesday. The poets, Fatemeh Ekhtesari, a woman, and Mehdi Musavi, have also both been sentenced to jail terms for "insulting the sacred" in their writings, a decision slammed by freedom of expression activists, reports CNN. "Ekhtesari and Musavi's arrests and convictions are a travesty of justice, and send a chill over the already beleaguered creative community in Iran," Karin Deutsch Karlekar, director of Free Expression Programs at PEN American Centre, said in a statement. Earlier this month, Ekhtesari and Musavi, who touched on social issues in their work, received prison sentences of 11-and-a-half and nine years respectively for convictions based on confessions extracted under duress, according to PEN. The flogging sentences came after Ekhtesari admitted to shaking hands with male participants at a poetry event in Sweden, PEN said. Shaking hands with a member of the opposite ***** who is not an immediate relation is considered an "illegitimate sexual relationship short of adultery" in Iran, it said. A spokesman for the Iranian judiciary has declined to comment on the poets' cases, which have not been covered in the country's state media.