Iranian teachers are expected to stage a new round of protests on Thursday as part of a nationwide movement that has been ongoing for many months. It demands an increase in poverty-level wages and safeguards on the rights of both teachers and students. However, the regime’s contempt for those rights is evident from numerous arrests of teacher-activists and trade unionists, many of which have led to multi-year prison sentences amidst broader crackdowns on social activism.
The threat of such crackdowns was underscored on Tuesday when it was reported that the judiciary had sentenced Rasoul Bodaghi, an organizer of prior teacher protests, to five years imprisonment on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security” and “spreading propaganda.” The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights quoted Bodaghi himself as saying, “My five-year prison sentence is for seeking justice and freedom; And for wanting to improve the education system and the rights of teachers and pupils.”
The same NGO emphasized on its website that Bodaghi’s sentencing reflected an overall “escalation” in “arrests, sentences, and summons,” targeting a range of groups. It noted that six civil activists and workers’ rights activists were arrested on April 15 alone, following unexplained and likely unlawful raids on their homes. Meanwhile, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that two Christian converts were sentenced to two years each in separate prisons for the “crime” of participating in a “house church.”
A week earlier, the civil activist Soheil Arabi was summoned to begin serving his own two-year sentence. Arabi had already been serving as a political prisoner in May 2021 when a new case was opened against him and he was reportedly given a new sentence at the end of a five-minute trial in which he was accused of “disturbing public opinion” and “spreading propaganda” by virtue of having remained politically active from behind bars. The incident is one of many that demonstrates the Iranian regime’s willingness and ability to mete out indefinite punishment to those who voice political, social, or ideological dissent.
The Iranian regime has long maintained the world’s leading rate of executions per capita, with a large number of annual executions carried out for political reasons. Meanwhile, the rate of execution would be substantially higher if it accounted for the number of inmates who are killed via torture or abuse, or die under mysterious circumstances while in the custody of the state.
At least two new incidents have been recognized in just the past two weeks. A 25-year-old Kurdish Iranian named Milad Jafari was arrested on April 7 and taken to Shapour police station, where he reportedly died within 24 hours. His family was not informed of his death until April 11, after which time they were given multiple contradictory explanations including an accidental fall and a drug overdose. But relatives who viewed the body reported that he had been bleeding from the nose and mouth and that there were bruises on his chest.
As recently as February, another Kurdish man died under similar circumstances in the same police station, which has been the site of numerous reports of torture over the years. The same can be said of various other detention facilities.
A senior member of Iran’s Teachers’ Trade Association Rasoul Bodaghi has been sentenced to five years in prison on the charges of "assembly and collusion" & "propaganda activities".#Iran #HumanRights pic.twitter.com/FuUm3ZfGSe
— IRAN HRM (@IranHrm) April 17, 2022
Another prisoner, Mehdi Salehi Ghaleh-Shahrokhi, was declared dead last Thursday. Authorities at Isfahan Central Prison reportedly phoned his family to inform them of his death, but as with Jafari’s family, no consistent explanation was given. Salehi had apparently been transferred to and from the hospital several times in recent months until after his final transfer he fell into a coma. Initial reports indicated that he had regained consciousness and his condition was improving on Wednesday, only for him to pass away the same night.
Some reports state that Salehi’s coma was the result of him having been given the wrong medication, and this has naturally fueled speculation that his treatment was intentionally botched either as a means of torture or as a form of deliberate extrajudicial execution. Salehi had been sentenced to death for charges including “armed rebellion” and “enmity against God” along with four fellow participants in the nationwide anti-government uprising of January 2018, but it is possible that authorities were concerned that his case could have become an object of international outcry as in the case of Navid Afkari. Afkari was a champion wrestler who was falsely accused of murder as a pretense for execution for participating in similar protests.
Such mistreatment of the prisoner’s family apparently persisted even after Salehi’s death, as all but his closest relatives were barred from attending his funeral, which authorities organized themselves without allowing anyone else to closely observe the state of his body. Those who did attend were reportedly filmed from multiple angles and informed that they themselves would face prison sentences if they spoke to the media about Salehi’s case.
In the face of such threats, much of the responsibility for publicizing his case necessarily falls to human rights activists outside Iran. Accordingly, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Iran Human Rights, said, “Regardless of what cause of death is announced by authorities, his case must be investigated as an extrajudicial killing by an international fact-finding mission. All those responsible in the chain of command, including prison officials, the Head of Judiciary and Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, must be held accountable.”
While the theocratic regime in Iran waits for this accountability, the threat of mistreatment, medical neglect, and outright murder looms over countless detainees and political dissidents, including those whose arrests and summons have only just been announced and also those who have been languishing in the regime’s prisons for months or years. On Tuesday, HRANA reported that political prisoner Khadijeh Mahdipour is being refused medical treatment despite two months of weight loss resulting from severe digestive issues. She was previously transferred to a hospital in January while serving a 20-month sentence for “spreading propaganda” and “insulting the supreme leader,” but her current situation indicates that in her case, too, hospitalization is intended only to prolong suffering.
