Reporters Without Borders is extremely worried about the health of journalist and human rights activist Emadoldin Baghi, who was rushed to hospital after suffering a double heart attack in Tehran’s Evin prison on 26 December and was returned to a general wing of the prison yesterday evening. He has been held in Evin for the past 74 days.
“The conditions in which Baghi is being held are unacceptable,” the press freedom organisation said. “He has been in solitary confinement ever since he was first taken to Evin, as if imprisonment was not already enough punishment. As his state of health has worsened steadily during the past two months, it is inconceivable that he should be expected to convalesce in prison.”
Baghi was rushed to Tehran’s Khamar Bani Hachem after his double heart attack. His lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, and his family were finally able to visit him yesterday after spending 24 hours without any news of him. When he was taken back to Evin, he was put in a new cell in section 350 of the prison.
Nikbakht told Reporters Without Borders that the deterioration in Baghi’s health was mainly due to the appalling conditions in the prison and to the harassment to which he has been subjected during interrogation sessions. “Emadoldin Baghi will not survive another heart attack,” he said.
An active campaigner against Iran’s death penalty, Baghi was awarded the French government’s human rights prize in 2005. He was sentenced in 2000 to three years in prison for “violating to national security.”
Meanwhile, Ejlal Ghavami, a reporter for the weekly Payam-e Mardom-e Kurdestan who has been held in the prison of Sanandaj since 9 July, was finally given 10 days leave from the prison on 26 December for treatment to an eye infection that has worsened since his arrest.
Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are both on the Reporters Without Borders list of “press freedom predators.” Twelve journalists are currently detained in Iran.
Reporters Without Borders
one must not forget that one aspect of “security” cases is the image that they carry for the groups that advance such issues. Therefore, before fake charges take to the news-media and become public, those who have had a hand in arresting the students must be weakened. Otherwise, after the severe charges are made public, repeated and are tied to the image of the actors, even the intervention of the head of the judiciary (as history demonstrates) cannot be of much help to the detainees.
How can we tell the judiciary officials of Iran that according to law juveniles can stay alive and continue to live with appropriate and suitable punishment? How must one make this request from the judiciary a public and wide-spread demand and point out that killing a juvenile who has not wholeheartedly committed an act does not solve any of the real problems facing the country?
it is easy to predict that the success of student activists in imposing their will and demands on government officials at academic institutions, such as the Teachers Training college and Zanjan University (where the students boldly took the initiative into their own hands), would result in a backlash by extreme right-wing officials who would plan an “instructive” counter-attack against the student movement.Hopefully such a reaction will not come. But from an analytic perspective, one must not negate it altogether.
This is the reason that the moment imprisoned students step out of prison, it becomes clear to every one why they were put behind bars: for simply criticizing the president. It becomes instantly clear why they were subjected to interrogations and what questions were asked of them. These are the events that portray the image of this country. Students, social activists and journalists are certainly not on the list of those that dent this image. The publication of the arrest of students because of their criticism of the president brings forth a caricature image of Mahmud Ahmadinejad which does not match the claims that he made at Columbia University or the image that the regime strives to present about its standing.
There are at least 70 young people on death row who at the time of their arrest were under the age of 16. In the past 12 months, Iranian organisations claim that 80 feminists have been arrested and 20 of them have been sentenced from three to five years in jail. A total of 54 journalists have ended up in prison, several were released without trial after serving jail time, while others remain behind bars. In the past 12 months, 34 newspapers and magazines, among them the feminist magazine Zanan, have been shut down.
