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TEHRAN Human rights activists in Iran and
abroad are increasing their pressure on the Iranian government over a
crackdown in recent months on rights advocates and other protesters.
The activists held a news conference
in Tehran on Tuesday to condemn large numbers of detentions in the past year.
Separately, students in Iran and
groups of Iranians abroad have announced a three-day hunger strike, beginning
Friday, to draw attention to what they said was President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's policies "that are reminiscent of some of the darkest days
of the Islamic Republic."
The call for a hunger strike was
initiated by Akbar Ganji, a rights advocate, released in March after being
imprisoned for five years, who is now in the United States. The group's
statement, on free-political-prisoners.net, said that students in New York
and Toronto would also participate.
In addition to individual arrests of
rights advocates, the groups criticized the government for using the police
to break up protests by such diverse groups as bus drivers seeking a raise,
advocates of women's rights and Sufis protesting a government order in
February to evacuate their place of worship. The order, on a legal
technicality, was a pretext to keep them from practicing their kind of Islam,
the rights advocates said.
"We want to show to the
international human rights groups that our efforts inside the country for the
release of political prisoners have reached a dead end," Abdullah
Momeni, a student leader in Tehran who supports the hunger strike, said in an
interview.
Protesters are calling in particular
for the release of Ramin Jahanbegloo, Mansour Ossanloo and Ali Akbar Moussavi
Khoeni, three men who they said "symbolize various groups of
prisoners."
Ossanloo has been in detention since last
December for helping organize the protest by bus drivers. Moussavi Khoeni, a
former member of Parliament, was arrested last month at a protest organized
by the women's rights advocates.
Jahanbegloo, an Iranian-Canadian
philosopher, was arrested in late April. The minister of intelligence,
Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, said on July 3 that the arrest was in connection
with efforts by the United States to start a "soft revolution" in
Iran.
No formal charges have been brought
against them.
Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday
condemned the accusations against Jahanbegloo and called them "a new
political maneuver by the government with the aim of tightening the gag on
the press."
Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian who received
the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, on Tuesday urged the government to allow
dissidents to hold meetings.
"Meetings are outlets through
which dissidents let off steam," she said. "If you block all those
outlets, there will eventually be an explosion."
TEHRAN
Human rights activists in Iran
and abroad are increasing their pressure on the Iranian government over a
crackdown in recent months on rights advocates and other protesters.
The activists
held a news conference in Tehran
on Tuesday to condemn large numbers of detentions in the past year.
Separately,
students in Iran and groups of Iranians abroad have announced a three-day
hunger strike, beginning Friday, to draw attention to what they said was
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
policies "that are reminiscent of some of the darkest days of the
Islamic Republic."
The call for a
hunger strike was initiated by Akbar
Ganji, a rights advocate, released in March after
being imprisoned for five years, who is now in the United States. The group's
statement, on free-political-prisoners.net, said that students in New York and Toronto
would also participate.
In addition to
individual arrests of rights advocates, the groups criticized the government
for using the police to break up protests by such diverse groups as bus
drivers seeking a raise, advocates of women's rights and Sufis protesting a
government order in February to evacuate their place of worship. The order,
on a legal technicality, was a pretext to keep them from practicing their
kind of Islam, the rights advocates said.
"We want
to show to the international human rights groups that our efforts inside the
country for the release of political prisoners have reached a dead end,"
Abdullah Momeni, a student leader in Tehran who
supports the hunger strike, said in an interview.
Protesters are
calling in particular for the release of Ramin Jahanbegloo, Mansour Ossanloo
and Ali Akbar Moussavi
Khoeni, three men who they said "symbolize
various groups of prisoners."
Ossanloo has
been in detention since last December for helping organize the protest by bus
drivers. Moussavi Khoeni,
a former member of Parliament, was arrested last month at a protest organized
by the women's rights advocates.
Jahanbegloo, an
Iranian-Canadian philosopher, was arrested in late April. The minister of
intelligence, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei,
said on July 3 that the arrest was in connection with efforts by the United States to start a "soft
revolution" in Iran.
No formal
charges have been brought against them.
Reporters
Without Borders on Wednesday condemned the accusations against Jahanbegloo and called them "a new political
maneuver by the government with the aim of tightening the gag on the
press."
Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian who received the 2003 Nobel Peace
Prize, on Tuesday urged the government to allow dissidents to hold meetings.
"Meetings
are outlets through which dissidents let off steam," she said. "If
you block all those outlets, there will eventually be an explosion."
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