The Iranian government has imposed a property ban on 53 individuals, including artists for expressing support for the antigovernment protest movement, a document published this week shows.
Mehdi Yarahi, a singer who supported the nationwide protests, in a post on his Instagram Monday published a picture of an order which belongs to Deeds and Properties Registration Organization of Iran showing that he is banned from buying and selling property.
Yarahi also announced that he along with famous actress Taraneh Alidousti, film director Asghar Farhadi and prominent musician Kayhan Kalhor were banned from transactions that need to be registered officially.
Within the past six months and during uprising against the clerical rulers, the government mounted pressure on many artists by arrests, summons, and imprisonment to force them to stop expressing support for the movement.
A TV host, Mojtaba Pourbakhsh, who used to work for Iran’s state television, also wrote in a tweet that it’s been almost forty days that he is jobless struggling against cancer at home.
He was fired by the directors of the state TV for expressing solidarity with people and with football legend Ali Karimi who is one of the opposition leaders now.
This is not the first time that the Islamic Republic puts such bans on artists or other activists and even journalists.
In 2019, Iran’s judiciary banned the employees of Iran International from purchasing or selling assets in Iran due to the coverage of the protests in November of that year.