Female Prisoners Beaten By Guards In Iran After Protest
Female prisoners were beaten by guards in Iran’s Urmia after they protested and set fire to blankets following restrictions on their movements.
Female prisoners were beaten by guards in Iran’s Urmia after they protested and set fire to blankets following restrictions on their movements.
A new prison warden imposed restrictions recently on the pretext that female prisoners were not attending Quran classes. He limited the time inmates could spent outdoors and their movements inside the prison.
Hengaw human rights monitoring group reported that after guards assaulted the prisoners, they were forced to sign a pledge on Friday “not to participate in any protest.”
There are many Kurd inmates in Urmia’s prison. The northeastern city has a mixed Kurdish and Azari population, and its prison also houses Kurdish political activists.
A report by another Iranian human rights group recently said Iran’s intelligence services maintain “secret prisons” in the region and torture and rape political detainees.
Assaulting prisoers, torture and rape have been reported before in Iran’s prisons.
The city protests, centered in the dried-up Zayandeh Roud riverbed, ended in security forces confronting the protesters with tear gas and shotguns on Thursday and Friday with at least 67 arrests and scores of injuries. "The confessions of these detainees show that the enemy cares nothing about the rightful demands of the farmers and the people of Esfahan," the program noted.
The two detainees − whose faces were obscured and voices distorted, purportedly to protect their identities − said they had poured fuel around the farmers’ tents in the early hours of Thursday.
"Burn the tents," the woman claimed she called out to her male companion, named as Mehdi. She said security forces were subsequently very polite "and pleaded with people to go home.”
The young man in the video said he had found empty tear-gas canisters that he used with red paint to create images of bloodshed for photos and films, presumably to circulate on social media.
Ophthalmologists in the past few days have reported tens of cases of eye injuries caused by shotgun pellets. A medical official told Iranian state television Saturday that 40 people had been treated for eye injuries sustained during the protests, with 19 hospitalized.
An injured eye has become a social-media symbol for the suppression of Friday's protests, with many activists posting images of bloody eyes or people holding bandage to an eye.
Iran has a long history of staged confessions of activists and those allegedly accused of ‘terrorist’ operations, including instances of people yet to be charged.
Tuesday’s program claimed that the two confessing to their role in Esfahan and others had played “a direct role in instigating the farmers to continue their protest." Other outlets, including Tasnim news agency, have circulated excerpts from the program including on Twitter alongside the caption "Confessions of a rioter woman in recent incidents in Esfahan.”
Authorities and hardliner media have accused some Esfahan protestors of being rioters and "agents of the enemies" who tried to highjack the farmers' legitimate protests over water shortages that have wracked the region in recent years. Kayhan newspaper called the protesters "America's foot soldiers" who perverted the water protests to "sow unrest and reap sanctions" ahead of Iran’s nuclear talks with world powers in Vienna, which resumed Monday. The chief of Esfahan province's justice department said Tuesday that those responsible would face speedy prosecution.
In a statement published on the ‘Kalemeh’ Telegram social-media channel Sunday, Abolfazl Ghadiani wrote that “all of the suppressive bodies…and their commanders are responsible for the [attack on] the peaceful, civil and non-violent protest of the people of Esfahan, but the central figure responsible for this aggression and the atrocities committed is Iran's dictator Ali Khamenei who must be held accountable.”
Ghadiani who was a political prisoner both during the monarchy and the Islamic Republic, blames the government for mismanaging water resources and accused security forces of setting fire to the tents of farmers protesting against a lack of water in the dry riverbed of Zayandeh Roud Thursday.
Ghadiani, who was imprisoned on charges of "propaganda against the regime" and "insulting the Supreme Leader" after the disputed 2009 presidential election, said security forces had “wounded a large number of protestors.”
Hasan Karami, a police commander, said Sunday that 2-3,000 "opportunists" had joined Friday's protests and that 67 had been arrested. The United States-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said Monday that at least 214 including 13 children had been arrested in total during the “recent protests.”
Social media users have posted photos of people with shotgun pellet injuries to their backs, legs and faces, including an old man with multiple pellet injuries to his back and a young boy who they claim lost both his eyes.
Iran International TV has obtained radiology images of a protester with tens of pellets embedded in his head, neck, and upper torso.
A medical official told Iranian state television Saturday that 40 people had been treated for eye injuries sustained during the protests, with 19 hospitalized. He did not specify how the injuries were sustained.
Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei said in a meeting of the judiciary's supreme council Monday that people had a right to look for solutions to their problems but warned them to be wary of the "enemies’ moves" and refuse to allow them to "infiltrate their ranks.”
He suggested that "ignorant people, ill-wishers and agents of foreign powers" had taken advantage of the protests seeking to "disturb people's peace and security."
Brigadier-General Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman of the armed forces, said that the “enemy wrongly thinks that the citizens of the Islamic Republic have turned their backs on it, do not want the authorities, and seek regime change."
Kayhan newspaper reported Sunday that "America's foot soldiers" had perverted the water protests to "sow unrest and reap sanctions" ahead of Vienna nuclear talks, which resumed Monday.
