Three young people were arrested in Iran last week, for having a water fight.
The three people, who consisted of men and women, were detained after they were seen soaking each other with water pistols in the 40C summer heat.
Last Friday hundreds of people attended a Facebook event called “Tehran’s water pistol fight” in the city’s Garden of Water and Fire, where they used plastic water pistols and bottles for a mass water fight.
The page had 14,000 attendees and prompted other events in cities across the country such as Isfahan and Karaj.
A programme was broadcast on Iran’s state television on Wednesday showing some of the detainees, with their backs to the camera, confessing to playing with water pistols.
One girl said: “We had been invited on internet to come and play with water.”
A boy added: “It was very intimate; it was much more intimate than it should have been.”
Ahmad Roozbehani, the head of Tehran’s morality police, said: "A mixed-gender event took place on Friday … They had been asked to bring water pistol toys, which most of them had in hand … they acted against social norms."
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Iranian MPs also voiced their disapproval. Conservative MP Hossein Ibrahimi said events like this were “shameful” and would spread “corruption”.
Men and women in Iran are not allowed to touch or have relationships outside social norms with each other unless they are related by blood or marriage. But increasingly, youths are attempting to break boundaries.
Some of those arrested have not yet been released, including one university student.
