PARIS —
Iran is stepping up arrests of activists and journalists in a crackdown against
civil society as anti-regime protests rage nationwide, activists say.
اضافة اعلان
Twenty
journalists have been imprisoned since the protests erupted earlier this month
over the death of
Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been arrested by the country’s
notorious morality police, according to the Washington-based Committee to
Protect Journalists.
Numerous
activists and lawyers have also been held, including the prominent freedom of
speech campaigner Hossein Ronaghi who was arrested over the weekend.
The arrests come
on top of severe internet restrictions and blocking of sites including
Instagram and WhatsApp, which activists say is aimed at preventing details of
the protests from reaching the outside world.
“By targeting
journalists amid a great deal of violence after restricting access to WhatsApp
and Instagram, the Iranian authorities are sending a clear message that there
must be no coverage of the protests,” Reporters Without Borders said in a
statement.
‘Defending
prohibited’
Hossein Ronaghi, a critic of Iran’s Islamic leadership, said in a video
posted at the weekend that he had initially eluded arrest by escaping his flat
when agents came for him.
But he was then
detained on Saturday when he went to Tehran’s Evin prison to meet prosecutors
and was also beaten by security agents, his brother Hassan wrote on Twitter.
His mother told
Manoto TV in an interview that his leg was broken.
Reports said
that his lawyers, who accompanied him to Evin, had themselves been detained.
Two other
lawyers have also been arrested, lawyer Saeid Dehghan wrote on Twitter.
“This means
defending protesters is prohibited!” he said.
Security forces
on Monday raided the home of activist and writer Golrokh Iraee and arrested
her, according to a message on her Twitter account.
Iraee, well
known for campaigning against stoning sentences in Iran, has spent much of the
past decade behind bars.
And activist
Majid Tavakoli, who has been repeatedly imprisoned in Iran in recent years
including after disputed 2009 elections, remains in jail after his arrest in
the early hours of Friday.
Activists said
two university students in their early 20s who were also beginning careers as
writers — Banafsheh Kamali and Maedeh Jamal — had also been arrested.
Videos posted on
social media claimed to show the moment Jamal was arrested, with a female voice
heard yelling for help.
Among the 20
journalists held, according to the CPJ, are photojournalist Yalda Moaiery, who
won international recognition for an iconic 2019 photo of protests, and
reporter Nilufar Hamedi — who exposed the case of Amini by going to the
hospital where she was in a coma.
Hamedi’s husband
wrote on Twitter that Hamedi had said in a call from jail that she was in
solitary confinement, and was unaware of the charges against her.
Moaiery is being
held in the notorious Qarchak women’s prison outside Tehran, from where she
told the Iran Wire news website that “we are not safe here” and “the situation
is very bad”.
The authorities
also arrested five prominent members of the Bahai religious minority in
different cities across the country, said Diane Alai, representative of the
Bahai International Community to the
UN in Geneva.
The Bahai —
Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority but not recognized in the Islamic
Republic — had already been experiencing a crackdown even before the protests
started, with senior figures arrested and homes destroyed.
Activists had accused
the Iranian authorities of being in the throes of a crackdown even before the
protests began. Two of the country’s most acclaimed filmmakers Jafar Panahi and
Mohammad Rasoulof were among those arrested.
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