IRAN: Nearly a month into hunger strike the health of Iranian political prisoner is deteriorating

24 May 2016

 

Jafar Azimzadeh, imprisoned at the notorious Evin Prison

The health of an Iranian political prisoner on indefinite hunger strike is in grave danger.

Jafar Azimzadeh, imprisoned at the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, is on Day 26 of his hunger strike protesting Tehran’s crackdown on union activity.

On Saturday, he was taken to hospital complaining of kidney pain but refused to have liquid serum administered and was transferred back to the prison, still in pain.

His wife reports that in addition to his kidney problems, Mr. Azimzadeh has lost a considerable of weight, his blood pressure has dropped and he is having vision problems.

The Tehran bus drivers’ union, the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (Sherkat-e Vahed) called for Mr. Azimzadeh’s release from prison and warned the public that his health had been greatly affected by his strike.

Mr. Azimzadeh, a workers’ rights activist, is being heavily pressured by the regime to end his strike. As previously reported on Stop Fundamentalism, Tehran’s prosecutor's office demanded that he stop the hunger strike after he was unable to walk from his cell on Ward 8 to the visitor’s hall to see his wife, on May 17.

They even offered him the chance to take long-term leave from prison, not out of concern for his health but because they are scared of him becoming a ‘martyr’.

IRAN:44th anniversary of execution of Iranian MEK founders

IRAN:44th anniversary of execution of Iranian MEK founders

 

بنیانگذار کبیر محمد حنیف نژاد ودو یار قهرمانش  شهیدان بنیانگذار سعید محسن  وعلی اصغر بدیع ذادگان 

 This week marks the 44th anniversary of the execution of the founders of Iran’s main opposition group.

On 25 May 1972, the founders and leaders of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), were executed by death squads after months of imprisonment and torture from the regime of the Shah.

The MEK, a group which sought, and still seeks, a secular Iranian government, was considered one of the main threats to the regime of the Shah.

The Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, arrested all MEK leaders and most of its members in a series of raids in 1971.

The founders, Mohammad Hanifnejad, Said Mohsen, and Ali-Asghar Badizadegan along with two other leaders, Mahmoud Askarizadeh, and Rasoul Meshkinfam stood firm in the face of the Shah’s regime and paid with their lives.

The origins of the MEK

The MEK was founded on September 6, 1965, by engineers; Hanifnejad, Mohsen, and Badizadegan. All three were once members of the Liberation Movement; created by Medhi Bazargan in 1961 and outlawed, along with other pro-democracy groups, in 1963 following the June Uprising in which opponents to the Shah’s regime were gunned down in the streets.

The men wanted to create a new path to democracy and began by meeting with like-minded friends for a twice-weekly discussion group focusing on religion, history, philosophy, and revolutionary theory.

They sought to discover the true interpretation of Islam which, they have shown, is incredibly democratic and compatible with modern ideals. The MEK views freedom, human rights and the equality of people regardless of gender, race or religion as commitments that were set out in the Quran, in teachings from the Prophet Muhammad and by other senior members of the faith.

Syrian opponent chides Iran’s support for Assad

 George Sabra

London, 10 May - A senior member of Syria’s democratic opposition has said that the fight against Bashar al-Assad is a joint battle with Tehran. George Sabra from the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) told Simaye Azadi (INTV), an Iranian opposition television channel, that the IranianIranian opposition was an ally.

Sabra praised Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, for her outspoken position on Aleppo and the war-crimes perpetrated by Assad with the aid of Tehran.

Police chief says Iran prisons are overcrowded

 

Police chief says Iran prisons are overcrowded

London, 10 May - Iran’s prisons have exceeded their capacity according to Iranian chief of police Brigadier General Hossein Ashtari, whose seemingly suggested solution is to increase the use of capital and corporal punishment.

"According to the judiciary, [Iran's] prisons are now full, and crimes can no longer be prevented with this method. So we must do something whereby the consequences of committing a crime is increased so that no one contemplates doing so”, said Brigadier General Hossein Ashtari.

British-Iranian mother of one-year-old girl detained without charge in Iran

A British-Iranian mother and charity worker has been detained by the Iranian regime's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), separated from her one-year-old baby daughter and held without charge in solitary confinement.

The family of charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, is issuing an urgent appeal for British Prime Minister David Cameron to overturn her “outrageous and arbitrary” detention, The Independent reported on Monday.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s British passport was confiscated, along with that of her baby, Gabriella, when she tried to return to London after a two-week holiday visiting family in Tehran.

After being stopped at the check-in desk on April 3, she was transported to an unknown detention facility some 1,000 km away in Kerman Province, the report said.

Speaking to The Independent, her British husband Richard Ratcliffe said his wife was being interrogated daily and had been given no access to a lawyer or to see her daughter, who is being cared for by her grandparents. The family understands she has been made to sign a confession under duress, but does not know its contents.

Iran regime chops off man’s hand as punishment

• 
  

fundamentalist regime has amputated the fingers of a man in his thirties in the city of Mashhad, north-east Iran, the latest in a line of draconian punishments handed down and carried out in recent weeks.

The inhumane sentence was carried out on Monday in the Central Prison of Mashhad. The state-run Khorasan newspaper identified the victim by his initials M. T., adding that he was 39 years old. The prisoner was accused of theft and is also serving a 3-year jail sentence.

The sentence was upheld by the regime's Court of Appeal.

The regime's prosecutor in Mashhad, Gholamali Sadeqi, said: "One of the most important policies in the current year is confronting criminals and carrying out sentences precisely and decisively.”

IRAN: Camp Liberty - Laila Mohammadi: The echoes of a common cause

Laila Mohammadi: The echoes of a common cause

Hello. This is my flute!

It appears to be a musical instrument but in fact, it is an efficient weapon that has harmonized hearts of the freedom fighters

with the Iranian people and people all over the world.

I played my flute in a beautiful sunrise in Ashraf. Within a short time I saw a young boy playing the same tune in Iran and then I heard its echo all over the world…! I call this reverberation, one of a “common cause”.

I found this common cause in my childhood. I learned it from my father who was a political prisoner at the time. I found it in the sad eyes of “Farshid”, a poor young boy with little clothing in the brutal cold winter. He was selling goods for a living in front of my high school. Farshid would sell pens in the morning and in the evening he would polish shoes on the street. There are many “Farshid”s in Iran. Yes. In Iran, there are many children and young adults whose childhood and dreams have been changed to gloom and dark prospects because of poverty.