Strikers Refuse Prison Health Facilities After Assaults

Immediately after the execution-by-COVID of political prisoner Baktash Abtin on January 8, 2022 in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, a group of fellow prisoners in Evin’s political prisoner Ward 8 began sitting in to demand justice for him.  On January 12, after receiving no response from prison authorities, they began a hunger strike.

The prison authorities then charged them with “propaganda against the regime” and “disrupting order in prison” for their protest, adding three more years to their already unjust sentences. Under the pretext of medical treatment, they moved some of the hunger strikers out of Evin to Greater Tehran Penitentiary, beating them en route.

Hunger strikes in solidarity with the Evin prisoners, of varying durations, soon spread to more than a dozen prisoners in at least 4 penitentiaries and at least 42 supporters outside prison.

As concerns about the strikers’ failing health mounted, calls were issued to end the strike or convert it to a Chain Hunger Strike. A core group continued, issuing the phoned statement quoted above, “Obviously, death will come to us in the end regardless, but it’s important how our life or death affects the lives of others.”

On January 28, these prisoners were taken to the prison infirmary to have their blood pressure taken. There, the infirmary “doctor” told them: “We don’t take pressure here, we do the pressuring and tear a***holes”. After this, 22 prison guards attacked them and beat them severely. Given these events, Hamid Haj Jafar Kashani stated that the hunger strikers would refuse to be taken to prison medical facilities. On February 19, according to cellmates, Hamid’s “cold, unconscious body” was taken to the hospital; as of this writing, we do not know his condition.

Concession Shows Impact of Struggle

On February 26, Day 45 of the strike, news has emerged that the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has acquiesced to one demand, announcing they have suspended the additional three-year sentences stemming from the hunger strikers’ protest.

For the hardline theocrats, making any concession at all is a bitter pill, so this demonstrates how seriously they are taking the public outcry around their abusive treatment of political prisoners, and the potential for further mass upheaval should others die in their custody.  

(The Center for Human Rights in Iran reported this month that a top-secret Iranian state document —leaked to Radio Farda by the hacker group responsible for releasing security camera footage from Evin Prison last summer—reveals worries by senior intelligence and military officials. “There has been a development in society that indicates it is in a state of explosion under its skin,” said an officer of the Islamic RevolutionaryGuard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organization, at a November 2021 private meeting of the “Task Force to Prevent Security Crises Among Lower Classes.” “During the past year social discontent has increased about 300 percent, with protests focused on inflation, salary delays, social disorders, and water [shortages].” [emphasis added])

Of course, this concession does not come close to meeting the hunger strikers’ demands for accountability, particularly for the death of Baktash Abtin by denying him timely medical care.

Whatever the next steps may be in this particular hunger strike —and others among the multitude of political prisoners in all Iran’s regions— we must take to heart their call: “we expect all freedom fighters, political and civil activists inside and outside the country, to shed light on crimes against humanity. Be the voice of the prisoners…”

Join the International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners. Donate to publish the Emergency Appeal widely and volunteer.

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“Accused of thinking, and guilty of not fearing”

This tribute to Baktash Abtin was composed by hunger strikers and read on their behalf by Hamid Haj Jafar Kashani. The following excerpt was translated by the IEC, see full tribute here (Farsi).

"Matchsticks instead of pens.
Blood spilt on the floor instead of ink.
Discarded bandage packages instead of paper.
I write to you about a dungeon.
I woke up yesterday, that was already tomorrow;
a white ceiling one meter from my bed,
reminded me of being repeatedly in the same place.
In a dream, I saw a crow.
…Accused of thinking, and guilty of not fearing,
not shutting your mouth, condemned
to watch the sky, or the barbed wire,
from the window of your cell:
a place from which all our questions have been exhumed.
What secret lies beneath all these deaths?!...
And maybe the next will be one of us.
The stories of these lives, these deaths, these bones
are very similar to thousands of other bones, in mass graves
of the summer of 1988. …
But now it is time to go;
Each of us on our paths, you toward death, and we toward life…
which one is more meaningful?
For dear Baktash Abtin, The sad winter of 1400 [2022]"