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| Jailed Women Activists Go on Hunger Strike in Tehran's Evin Prison |
| 2008-07-12 |
| Once again, Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran, has drawn the attention of human rights activists; this time the notorious jail—infamous for housing political and social figures—is holding 10 women on hunger strike. Almost one month has passed since the doors of ward 209 were shut on women's rights activist Mahboubeh Karami and nine other women; and the Iranian judiciary still has not presented the legal basis or accusations on which the detainees are being held. "It has been weeks since I have officially accepted to defend the case of Ms. Karami, but I have not succeeded to visit my defendant yet. Nor am I aware of the charges against her," said Hooshang Poor Babaee, Karami's advocate lawyer. On the fourth week of their detention, the 10 female inmates, exhausted by the grave conditions, began a hunger strike to protest the "illegal approach" of the judicial and prison officials. In an interview with the United States-funded Persian-language Radio Farda, Sadigheh Masaebi, Mahboubeh's mother talked about the last conversation she had with her daughter: "'They are killing us here,' she [Karami] told me on phone. She said that her body is full of bruises, and the ten of them are crawling into each other in a tiny cell. She said that she and the nine other inmates are going on hunger strike from Sunday [July 6]." Karami is 39. The ages of the other inmates range from 17 to 70, according to what Karami has told her mother. The women were arrested during a protest against "economical corruption" in Tehran. But Karami has denied any involvement in the protest, and said her presence in the tumultuous area had been entirely coincidental. She said that she was passing through the area on a bus when the police and plainclothes officers stopped the vehicle and arrested them. "'The police stopped the bus in front of the Mellat Park. Then they began hitting the windows with their batons and forced the driver to open the doors. They attacked a man in the bus. I could not keep silent and when I protested, they took me in too,'" Mahboubeh's mother quoted her daughter as saying. Those demonstrating in Mellat Park were protesting the June 11 arrest of Abbas Palizdar, who had accused several senior Iranian officials of financial corruption in speeches he made at universities in Hamedan and Shiraz in May. He had been involved in a parliamentary Judicial Inquiry and Review Committee that had conducted an investigation into affairs of the judiciary. The protest had been organized by foreign-based opposition television channels that the Islamic Republic considers illegal and decadent. |
| Posted by:3dc |