Iran political prisoners in Evin Prison on hunger strike

According to reports from inside Iran, a number of political prisoners in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison are on hunger strike.

Political prisoners Jafar Azimzadeh, a worker’s rights activist, and Ismail Abdi, Secretary General of Iran’s Teachers’ Trade Association (ITTA), are on Day 7 of an indefinite hunger strike. In a statement they outlined the reasons for their hunger strike.

“In protest to the crackdown on civil activities and gatherings and strikes by workers and teachers, wages below the poverty line, a ban on independent and free gatherings to mark International Workers’ Day and Teachers Day in Iran and violations of basic rights of Iran’s workers and teachers, we are refusing prison food and embarking on an indefinite hunger strike commencing April 29, 2016,” their statement said.

Another political prisoner Ali Moezzi, whose relatives are members of the main Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), has announced that he plans to join Mr. Abdi and Mr. Azimzadeh on hunger strike as a sign of solidarity beginning on Friday, May 6.

In a statement, he said: “A regime which suppresses civil associations and activists would never provide for the trampled rights of teachers and laborers.”

Mr. Moezzi who is a political prisoner of the 1980s suffers from various diseases, including cancer and acute kidney disease, and his health has deteriorated from years of torture in the Iranian regime’s dungeons and the systematic denial of proper medical treatment. Two of his daughters are members of the PMOI (MEK).

Separately, imprisoned teacher Mahmoud Beheshti Langaroudi, former secretary general and current speaker of Iran’s teachers’ union, started a hunger strike on April 20 in Evin Prison in protest to his 14-year prison sentence.

He has embarked on a dry hunger strike since Monday, May 2.

Mr. Langaroudi has been arrested several times during the past few years and has been physically and psychologically tortured. He was most recently detained on September 6, 2015 when Ministry of Intelligence agents raided his home. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison by the regime’s so-called revolutionary courts.