To the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei
Tehran
Islamic Republic of Iran
Paris, July 27, 2019
Two months after the peaceful rally of the 1st May 2019, held in front of the Iranian parliament in Tehran, the pressure on arrested people does not stop increasing.
Of the fifty or so arrested demonstrators most of those who were temporarily released on bail, are summoned to court and continually harassed.
Iranian labour rights activists Anisha Assadolahi, Atefeh Rangriz and Neda Naji and Iranian journalist Marzieh Amiri have been arbitrarily detained, without access to a lawyer, for weeks and accused of spurious national security offences in connection with a peaceful International Workers’ Day gathering. They were initially held in prolonged solitary confinement amounting to torture or other ill-treatment. Ms. Neda Naji has been transferred to the prison hospital as a result of injuries received under torture.
Now Atefeh Rangriz and Neda Naji are held next to women convicted of violent crimes, they are at risk of assault.
Iranian journalists Sanaz Alahyari and Amirhossein Mohammadifar have been on hunger strike since 4 July. They are protesting their continued detention and the authorities’ ongoing crackdown on labour rights activists and journalists. They have been arbitrarily detained since January 2019 without access to a lawyer.
They are facing charges including ’gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security’, ’spreading propaganda against the system’, ’disseminating false information’ and ’belonging to a group formed for the purpose of undermine national security ’, solely in connection with their reporting on workers’ rights protests in the Haft Tappeh sugar cane industrial complex.
Iranian labour rights activists Esmail Bakhshi and Sepideh Gholian, who were rearrested on 20 January after speaking out about beatings and other abuse they suffered in detention in late 2018, are at grave risk of further torture.
– Esmail Bakhshi is a spokesperson for the independent union of workers at the Haft Tappeh sugar cane industrial complex.
– Sepideh Gholian is a young labour rights activist who covered the ongoing protests of Haft Tappeh workers. They both are under strong pressure to retract their statements of being tortured in the prison.
The trade unions, the signatories of this letter, strongly condemn the unbearable repression and harassment of the Iranian trade-unionists and labour rights activists.
They call on the Iranian regime to respect the international conventions ratified by its government, including freedom of association, gathering, strike and collective bargaining.
They demand solemnly the immediate and unconditional release of all the arrested trade unionists, journalists and labour rights activists.
Please, Your Excellency, receive our respectful greetings.
Copies to:
Mr. Hassan Rohani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mr. Ebrahim Raïssi, Chief of the Judiciary