January 20, 2022
The following is the IEC’s translation of a message from political prisoners now on hunger strike inside Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. It was conveyed to supporters in Iran who recorded it, produced the video below, and are circulating it internationally with the hashtag #ChainHungerStrike.
This hunger strike was triggered by the January 8 death of beloved Iranian poet Baktash Abtin at the hands of his Islamic Republic jailers, who deliberately denied him medical care even after he fell ill with COVID. On January 12, after sitting in for five days, six political prisoners in Ward 8 of Evin Prison went on hunger strike to protest “the role of prison officials in Baktash Abtin’s death,” and to demand an investigation and apology.
Abtin’s death and that of political prisoner Adel Kianpour days before, as well as the regime’s escalating abuses against other political prisoners have sparked protests in Iran and internationally, and intensified the need to step up the struggle to free Iran’s political prisoners. (See www.FreeIransPoliticalPrisonersNow.org for further updates.)
Although I have been dead for a hundred years,
I will stand at my grave
To take the heart out of the devil’s body,
By my fiery cry!
Only a day after the death of Baktash Abtin, a wave of support and an outcry for justice has begun for him and other prisoners killed in Iran.
The transfer of prisoners and their abduction to unknown places in order to break this solidarity continues, but solidarity with our hunger strike continues in Iran and abroad.
Hunger strikers Hamid Haj Jafar Kashani and Mahmoud Ali Naghi as well as Mohammad Abolhassani have been transferred to the Greater Tehran Prison.
We just found out that political activist and journalist Keyvan Samimi was transferred from Ward 4 of Hall 1 in the middle of the night on Thursday, January 20, without any prior notice. He was inhumanly and forcefully beaten and threatened, according to his cellmates, in a brutal physical assault by guards who tore his clothing off. He was then transferred to Ghezel Hesar (Golden Cage) Prison.
Keyvan Samimi is a political activist and journalist who has been arrested many times in previous years, before and after the revolution, and spent years in prison, for publishing exposures of the government in newspapers and magazines.
Because of the regime’s fear of unity and solidarity among prisoners, active prisoners are deported to other prisons. After the torture and killing of Sattar Beheshti in prison, the regime was forced to apologize and expel the entity’s police chief and the head of Evin prison. The regime has never again accepted any responsibility for the killing of political activists in prison. The regime declares that all of them died of illnesses.
However, if prisoners who were ill had been taken to the hospital on time, these catastrophes could have been prevented. The question has arisen, why is it only these political prisoners who are so easily killed in prison? Therefore, we felt that to enlighten the public that the political prisoners are on a hunger strike, starting after the death of Baktash Abtin, to communicate to the outside world in hopes of preventing the deaths and transfers of prisoners who are on hunger strike in Tehran and Evin prisons and other prisons throughout the country.
Statement by Political Prisoners Mohammad Abolhassani, Sina Beheshti, Hamid Kashani, Mohammad Turkman, Mahmoud Ali Naghi, Hossein Qashqaei, Reza Salavati, Milad Arsanjani, Shahab Soltanian, Mehran Delfan Azari, and Akbar Faraji
