LEADING JAILED JOURNALISTS ON HUNGER STRIKE
TEHRAN 17TH Feb. (IPS) As three leading imprisoned Iranian journalist started an unlimited hunger strike to protest to prison authorities insulting behaviours, their families warned the authorities of a similar action in front of the Majles (parliament) in case difficulties created by the Judiciary in meeting their families are not removed.
The independent Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) quoted Friday families of Akbar Ganji, Emadeddin Baqi and Masha’llah Shamsolva'ezin informing that their men have not accepted prison food since Saturday, the anniversary day of the proclamation of the Islamic Republic to protest the "discourteous behaviour" of the prison authorities towards the men's families and "restrictions" imposed on them by the prison authorities, which included withdrawing the telephone service for five months, the agency reported.
Mr. Ganji and Mr. Baqi are both well-known investigative journalist and writers who played an important role in the divulgation of the involvement of Iranian Intelligence Ministry in the assassination of political and intellectual dissidents.
Mr. Ganji is serving a ten years prison terms to be followed by another five years in exile. Mr. Baqi was sentenced to five years imprisonment.
A former Editor of "Jam’eh", "Toos", "Neshat" and "Asre Azadegan", all shut by the Judiciary, Mr. Shamsolva’ezin, or Shams, as referred to by his friends, is serving five years for questioning the Islamic laws of hanging.
Speaking Friday to the Persian service of the BBC, the wife of Mr. Baqi, Mrs. Fatemeh, explained that prison wards reverts to humiliating attitudes to limit the meeting of the prisoners with their families, like imposing body search on the detainees before every meeting, "exactly as they do it with drug traffickers or addicts" or demand specific Islamic dress for the girls".
"Sometimes, she said, they keep families waiting outside prison doors for hours in the cold winter temperature, at others, they stop telephone communications".
As a result, Mrs. Baqi said, the prisoners decided to refuse to take food in order to protest to both such "unacceptable behaviours" in the one hand and pressures brought on other prisoners like Ezzatollah Sahabi, Ali Afshari or Ahmad Zeydabadi, on the other.
Mr. Sahabi, a veteran politician and journalist and Mr. Afshari, an outspoken students leader were arrested after coming back from Berlin where they attended a Conference on the future of Iranian reform process.
"We don’t know who is responsible of all these unscrupulous, inhuman pressures that are unjustly put on political prisoners and their families?, Mrs. Baqi asked, defying the authorities to "show up your visage if you are not afraid of our men, kept hostages".
Asked if the families have ever received any answer from the Judiciary, Mrs. Fatemeh said not only the authorities "systematically" failed to answer them, but they continue harassing political prisoners.
Reports are stating that the imprisoned journalist, Ahmad Zeidabadi, has been transferred to Prison number 56 that belong to the revolutionary guards.
Mr. Zeydabadi was transferred to the new location after he broke his Hunger strike, based on official promises to be transferred to the section attributed to journalists and political prisoners at Evin prison.
The conservative-controlled "Kayhan" afternoon paper, the mouthpiece of hard line intelligence community citing prison officials, said a medical team had performed tests Sunday which reveal that Zeidabadi is in a satisfactory physical condition, and that inmates had also witnessed the journalist eat.
Protesting to the article, Mrs. Mahdyeh Mohammadi, the wife of Mr. Zeydabadi ridiculed the authorities, particularly the Judiciary, revealing that they had pushed the cowardice to the point saying prisoners have not gone on hunger strike but undertaking a water therapy regime in order to rejuvenate themselves.
She was joined by Mrs. Farideh Saber, the wife of Mr. Hoda Saber, another journalist arrested recently, who had on judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahroudi to release her husbands from prison.
Mrs. Saber told journalists in Tehran that plain-clothes men with a court warrant had searched her home as well as the office of her husband's banned liberal Iran Farda bi-weekly, taking away books documents and even personal belongings.
Tehran's revolutionary court late last month ordered the arrest of journalist Hoda Saber after he appeared in court for questioning.
Some 15 journalists are in jail in Iran, either serving heavy jail sentences for their activities or awaiting trial.
Mr. Zeidabadi, a staff journalist with the "Hamshahri" daily, was arrested at his home August 7 and accused of "lies" against the Islamic state, in November complained of the lack of security in the prison, saying he was attacked as he slept.
Responding to orders from Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the lamed leader of the Iranian Islamic regime. the Judiciary has closed down more than 30 independent newspapers and periodicals and jailed many reformist activists, some still awaiting their trial.
Meanwhile, the wife of a reform-minded Iranian cleric, defrocked and jailed by the Clergymen’s Special Tribunal (CST) has lodged a complaint to the Majles (parliament), protesting the unfrocking of her husband.
Hojjatoleslam Ali Afsahi, Editor of the banned "Cinema and Sports" weekly magazine was defrocked and sentenced to four months in prison by the CST for insulting religious values in a speech to cinema critics in the southern city of Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf.
Mr. Afsahai however rejected the court's authority and said he would not appeal or ask for mercy. "I will never file an appeal or ask for pardon...Any judgment coming from this court on these issues, even a not-guilty verdict, is an insult", Mr. Afsahi said in an open letter to the Judiciary.
"Defrocking should be merely handed down to those waging blatant corruption on the earth", ISNA quoted Mrs. Afsahi as having said.
The leader-controlled Judiciary continued confiscating freedom in Iran by ordering the arrest, last week, of two other journalists in Mr. Amir Abas Fakhravar of the banned daily "Mosharekat" and Mr. Mohammad Baqer Vali-Beig, the manager of the Jame’eh Rooz Publishing House. ENDS HUNGER STRIKE 16201