Iran uses cross-dressing as punishment for convicts

Iranian men wear women’s clothes in support of female right’s Kurdish news agency in Iran, NNSROJ, reported last Friday of a controversial punishment in the Islamic Republic's Kurdish district, where security officials are punishing male criminals by dressing them in women's clothing. The peculiar method of punishment was exposed on Monday, when a man was forced to walk through the Iranian city of Mehran dressed in Kurdish women’s traditional attire, as a means to humiliate him.
The incident has sparked protests on the streets which have spread to the Iranian Parliament.
Al-Arabiya network reported that this was not the first time the Mehran court decided to use this form of punishment on convicted criminals.
The unusual sentencing soon caught the attention of the Feminist Kurdish Union in Iran, who organised a demonstration in the city to protest the incident, describing the punishment as “humiliating” and “insulting” to women and the Kurdish community in general.  The Feminist union have called on the Mehran court to scrap the punishment.
The incident has also sparked a protest on Facebook, with protestors creating a page called, Being a woman is not humiliating should not be considered punishment. It has so far garnered over 6,000 likes, with Iranian men in and outside the country posting photographs of themselves wearing women’s clothing and women doing the same in male clothing.
France 24 news website reported that so far 17 Iranian MPs have signed a petition sent to the Justice Ministry and condemning the punishment as "humiliating towards Muslim women."

Source: YNET news