Activists Arrested After Mass Strike in Iran’s Kurdistan Province Against “Revenge” Executions
Activists Arrested After Mass Strike in Iran’s Kurdistan Province Against “Revenge” Executions
After a mass strike by Kurdish merchants in western Iran on September 12, 2018, Iranian security forces arrested several civil rights activists in the region, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has learned.
The strikers closed their shops in protest against recent executions of Kurdish prisoners and Iran’s missile attack on Kurdish dissidents in Northern Iraq.
“I was in Marivan [Iran’s Kurdistan Province] and I saw that two-thirds of the city’s shops were closed and the main streets were mostly blocked and about 20 to 30 percent of government employees did not show up to work,” Dana Lenjabadi, a Kurdish activist in Marivan, told CHRI on September 13.
“The city of Sanandaj [Kurdistan Province’s capital] was 90 percent shut down and two-thirds of the shops in Mahabad and Saqqez were also closed,” he added.
In response to the protest that was organized by Kurdish opposition groups, at least 12 activists were arrested by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Ministry of Intelligence in Marivan and Sanandaj. Two remained in detention as of September 13: Souran Daneshvar and Aram Fathi.
Several other residents, “possibly shopkeepers,” were also arrested in connection with the September 12 strike, according to Lenjabadi.
On September 8, three Kurdish prisoners, Ramin Hossein Panahi, Zanyar Moradi and Loghman Moradi (no relation), were executed in Tehran. Kamal Ahmadinejad, an alleged member of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), was also executed in Miandoab Central Prison in West Azerbaijan Province on September 10.
The UN cited serious concerns regarding the use of torture, forced confessions and denials of access to counsel in the cases of Panahi and Zanyar Moradi and Loghman Moradi. Ahmadinejad’s family had also stated that he had been forced to make a false confession under torture.
“We were tortured a lot. I still have the marks on my body. I was even operated on in 2012 and 2013 for my injuries. I have slipped discs,” Zanyar Moradi said in an interview with CHRI from Rajaee Shahr Prison in January 2017.
The September 8 executions were followed by an Iranian missile attack that day against the PDKI’s headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan that left two senior party officials dead and several wounded.
Read More: Iran Human Rights
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Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights