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Pressure on as jailed Iranian dissident hints death is near

 
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Rasker



Joined: 03 Feb 2005
Posts: 1455
Location: USA

PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 5:53 pm    Post subject: Pressure on as jailed Iranian dissident hints death is near Reply with quote

Pressure on as jailed Iranian dissident hints death is near

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050715/wl_mideast_afp/iranjusticedissident_050715194203

2 hours, 7 minutes ago

TEHRAN (AFP) - The pressure on Iran to free jailed dissident Akbar Ganji is growing with each day of his hunger strike, but the hardline judiciary insists it is not going to release every prisoner just because he goes without food.

Ganji, who has been on hunger strike for 35 days, hinted in a recent letter that he is dying.

"This flame is going out, but (my) voice will raise others that will be louder," Ganji said in a July 10 letter to "defenders of freedom throughout the world" that caused growing concern among his supporters.

Despite alarming reports about the political prisoner's health, Iran's ultra-conservative judiciary has refused to set him free.

"He is under special medical care ... and the prison physicians examine him two or three times a day," the deputy head of Tehran's judiciary, Mohammad Salarkia, said Thursday quoted by the IRNA agency.

"We too are unhappy with the conditions Ganji has created for himself but he is a prisoner who should serve his prison term. Every prisoner going on hunger strike is not going to be released."

For its part, the prosecutor's office in Tehran said Ganji had been examined by doctors on Thursday and that his condition was stable.

He is in "very good condition, according to the doctors, and contrary the psychological war by certain media," said a statement carried by IRNA.

Ganji was sentenced in 2001 to six years behind bars over articles he wrote linking senior regime officials, including ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, to the serial murders of several intellectuals and writers.

Ganji, who has demanded his unconditional release, reiterated that he would rather die than give up his ideals: "Socrates chose death so that his ideas could live on; by his death he became the symbol of individual freedom in the community."

He launched a fresh verbal attack on Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and continued to defy the Islamic regime by preaching "civil disobedience" at the risk of compromising any possible release.

In order to write the letter, Ganji told of struggling to overcome "great physical weakness."

Ganji said he had lost 22 kilograms (48 pounds) has been consuming water and sugar cubes since he began the hunger strike, which he observed for 12 days before stopping temporarily when he was granted a short period of leave on medical grounds.

He resumed the strike on his return to prison on June 11.

The hunger strike was initially launched as a protest after Ganji, who says he suffers from chronic asthma, was not allowed to seek medical treatment outside prison.

The prisoner, who was visited Thursday by three friends, "fell briefly into a coma Monday", according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"He is currently in the prison hospital ... Doctors say he needs one month of total rest outside prison," the source added.

"His friends asked him to abandon his hunger strike. They told him that after 30 days he risked irreversible damage to his organs and a brutal death but he continues to demand his unconditional release."

Salarkia said Ganji's family had been informed that he could have been hospitalised at a medical centre outside the prison but the dissident tried to "politicise" the issue.

Those close to Ganji say there are some who want to get revenge against Ganji, who has relentlessly criticised the regime.

Still, his friends have not given up hope.

"It is not impossible that he could be freed this week," said one source close to Ganji.

There have been widespread calls for Ganji's liberation, including from the
European Union, Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi and the United States, which has praised his "courageous efforts to investigate extra-judicial killings by Iranian security forces and his commitment to free speech and democratic government".

Mohammad Taq Rahbar, an MP and cleric, said: "Ganji must start to eat so that he does not die. Hunger strikes are illegal in prison.

"Who said there was no freedom in Iran?" Rahbar asked. "Show me another place in the world where one could make such scornful statements against the system."

The pressure on Iran to free jailed dissident Akbar Ganji, seen here in May 2005, is growing with each day of his hunger strike, but the hardline judiciary insists it is not going to release every prisoner just because he goes without food(AFP/File/Atta Kenare)
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Spenta



Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Posts: 1829

PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 6:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If Ganji dies, the EU will have blood on its hands.

Calling for his release isn't enough, because if he dies, and the filthy, Greedy, Neo Coloniali$t EU goes back to its Mullah a$$ ki$$ing, shich they almost certainly will, then they have blood on their hands. And since sanctioning the Mullah$ after Ganji's death is not an option for the greedy pigs in Europe, then the EU better do something NOW!


But they're usually so blinded by their own immoral greed, they probably won't figure it out! Rolling Eyes

Sad
Sad


Last edited by Spenta on Fri Jul 15, 2005 6:41 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Spenta



Joined: 04 Sep 2003
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 6:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote



More pics here:
http://www.iranian.com/PhotoDay/2005/July/ag1.html

and here:
http://www.iranian.com/PhotoDay/2005/July/h1.html

Ganji's letter from prison in English:
http://freeganji.blogspot.com/2005/07/second-letter-to-free-people-of-world.html

In Persian:
http://www.iran-emrooz.net/index.php?/news/more/2819
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Rasker



Joined: 03 Feb 2005
Posts: 1455
Location: USA

PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 4:46 pm    Post subject: Concern over political prisoners mounts Reply with quote

Payvand's Iran News ...
http://www.payvand.com/news/05/jul/1122.html

7/16/05
Iran: Concern over political prisoners mounts

TEHRAN, 14 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - Police used violence to break up a student demonstration in the Iranian capital on Tuesday, amid escalating protests and concern over the deteriorating health of political prisoner and journalist, Akbar Ganji.


Recent photo of Akbar Ganji

The police beat both male and female demonstrators and a local Reuters journalist covering the story was also attacked with batons as they tried to disperse the crowd outside Tehran University, in the centre of the city.

Akbar Ganji, Iran's most famous political prisoner, was given a six year prison sentence in 2000 after following his trial on a variety of charges. Some charges related to an article he wrote that linked some of the country's top officials to the 1998 murder of dissident intellectuals, known as the 'serial murders.' He was temporarily released from prison in May for medical care, when he came to the end of a 43-day hunger strike.

However, since returning to prison in June, he has resumed his hunger strike and he is now reported to be suffering severe respiratory problems.

Protesters in Tehran

Ganji's worsening health has prompted strong reactions from the West. As his supporters gathered at the university, President Bush released a statement calling for Ganji's release.

The authorities in Tehran reacted angrily to what they see as outside interference in domestic judicial affairs. State-run radio reported Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, as saying: "The White House talks about violations of human rights in Iran while the world hates the US violations of human rights in both Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons [the two controversial US detention facilities holding untried terror suspects]."

On Wednesday, 33 Iranian political activists wrote a letter to the United Nations warning that Gangi's life is in danger.

"For the sake of human rights, (we) ask you to intervene directly in Ganji's case and follow it as an urgent human rights issue," the activists said in a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Ganji said in a statement released in May: "I protest against my illegal and unjust imprisonment, all the more so because I cannot even pursue my treatment outside Evin prison. I am beginning an unlimited hunger strike this evening. No one should be imprisoned - not even for a second - for expressing an opinion."

There are also concerns about the health of Nasser Zarafshan, another political prisoner held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. Zarafshan was the lawyer for the defence in the 'serial murders' case and he was detained in August 2002 on charges of divulging state secrets. He was sentence to five years in prison and 70 lashes.

In the past, the US-based pressure group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called Iran the world's biggest prison for journalists and in recent years, more than 100 publications have been shut down by Iran's hard-line judiciary, on charges ranging from criticising the leadership to 'insulting religious sanctities'.

Journalists and political dissidents are fearful that under Iran's new ultra-conservative President-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, political crackdowns could increase as the power of the ideological right continues to grow.

---

The above article comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004
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