Country: Iran
ICHRCanada strongly condemns Akram Nasirian’s arrest, and calls on the government of Iran to release her immediately and unconditionally.
Charity Worker, and women’s rights activists Akram Nasirian was arrested by unidentified security agents in Tehran for unknown reasons, on April 29, 2019, with out any prior notice according to the “Voice of Iranian Women” charity organization.
Akram Nasirian, was working in flood-impacted areas of the country helping the people whom has suffered from the horrific floods since the Persian New Years, and was educating the Afghan immigrants to read and write, which neither are crimes.
Since her family was looking for her not knowing where she had been taken, her family was informed by Tehran’s Detective Bureau that her cell-phone shows her location to be in the Evin region in Tehran.
Nasirian made a brief phone call to her family in the following days and said she was being held for interrogations and that a case had been filed for her with the second branch of the Prosecutor’s Office in Evin.
“My mother Akram Nasirian was arrested on the street on Monday, April 29 [2019] and taken to Evin Prison without anyone informing to us,” her son Nima Mehdipour said in a video message on Instagram.
He added: “For what crime have you arrested my mother? For teaching Afghan refugees to read and write and helping flood victims in the south of the country? I call on all social activists and human rights groups to work for her immediate and unconditional release. Free Akram Nasirian.”
Charity Worker Akram Nasirian, a member of the Association of the Voice of Iranian Women (Neday-e Zanan-e Iran) charity organization, was a member of a relief group assisting the flood victims.
Nasirian is not the first person to be arrested after working in flood-impacted areas in Iran.
In April, agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) intelligence organization arrested dozens of Ahwazi Arab volunteers as they were trying to help people in the flood-stricken areas of Khuzestan Province, southeast Iran.
All Iranian provinces have been affected by floods. At least two million citizens are in need of humanitarian aid and more than half a million have been displaced, losing their homes and all their belongings. Instead of sheltering people, the regime’s Red Crescent is selling them tents for 500,000 tomans, each.
According to an MP, in Khuzestan, alone, at least 300,000 houses have been destroyed.
Hedayatollah Khademi said if the damages by floods is equal if not more than the damages caused by the eight-year war with Iraq. Other sources describe the incident as the worst natural disaster happening in Iran in the past 15 years, affecting 2,000 cities and town in 31 provinces.
The situation of flood victims is critical, as many are stranded in remote areas without access to food, clean water, medicine, clothing and heating.
And yet the government of Iran, instead of attending to the needs of the affected citizens, has brought reign of harassments, arrests, and prosecutions upon the people trying to help or raise awareness towards the flooded areas‘ needs.
ICHRCanada strongly condemns Akram Nasirian’s arrest, and calls on the government of Iran to release her immediately and unconditionally. As well as urging the international community to pressure Iran’s government to abide by the human rights laws.