Iran Writers Association calls for release of jailed members
The three imprisoned writers (from l to r): Baktash Abtine, Keyvan Bajan and Reza Khandan-Mahabadi.
FB / RS
Text by: Nasser Etemadi
5 mins
Three members of the Iranian Writers' Association were jailed on September 26 after convictions handed down by the Tehran Revolutionary Court for "propaganda against the regime" and "conspiracy against the security of the country".
The association protests against these imprisonments and demands the immediate release of its members and that of all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience.
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In an interview with
RFI's Persian editorial staff
, Ali Kakavande, poet and member of the Iranian Writers' Association, declared that “
the Iranian government's fear of general discontent is pushing it to put independent writers and defenders of freedom of expression.
"
Accused of "propaganda against the system" and "attacking national security", three members of this association - Baktash Abtine, Reza Khandan-Mahabadi and Keyvan Bajan - have just been sent to Evin prison in Tehran. .
They are accused of having published the internal journal of their association, "
Free thought
", and of having participated, in 2015, in a commemoration of the assassination of two writers perpetrated, in 1998, by agents of the services. Iranian secrets.
For Ali Kakavande, the heavy charges pronounced against his friends "
are not unrelated to the social and economic crises that the country is currently going through, and in particular the fear of the Iranian government of seeing the emergence of new protests similar to those which have upset the landscape. Iranian policy during the winter of 2017.
”
According to him, the sentences are “
indicative of the fear of a regime in great difficulty, anxious to make understand to a dissatisfied population that it will not be free to act and to express its general ill-being.
According to him, they thus amount to declaring to the Iranians: "
We will not let you act and freely express your discontent.
And you can see that we already incriminate and imprison writers for having dared to write and defend freedom of expression.
"
But are Iranian writers really opposed to the regime, as Tehran authorities suggest by attacking writers?
"
Not at all
," answers Ali Kakavande.
The Association of Writers has never had such a vocation since its birth, more than fifty years ago,
underlines the Iranian poet.
The arrest of its members is a continuation of the pressure exerted against it.
"
According to Ali Kakavande, "
The social protests which have upset the political landscape in Iran for three years are fueling the fear of the Iranian government and pushing it to stifle any dissenting voice
".
“
The goal,
” he says, “
is to reverse the trend by scaring the population.
"In fact," the
more fearful the regime
, maintains the writer, the
more it tends to defend itself tooth and nail to call the recalcitrant to order.
"But for Ali Kakavand, this is"
a bad calculation.
The government method has the opposite effect.
"
He recalls that the one and only vocation of the Association of Writers of Iran, since its foundation, “
is to fight against censorship and to defend freedom of expression.
Repressing it
, he says,
[as was the case in 1998 after the assassination of two of its members] would push young writers to want to join it by declaring:
"we are all writers and the place of the writer is it's not jail. "
"
“
It is shameful,
insists Ali Kakavande,
that we can still in the twenty-first century imprison a writer for the reason that he dared to write and defend freedom of expression.
He calls on "
all writers, poets and artists to be the voice of the writers imprisoned in Iran and to demand their release.
"
Bektash Abtin (6yrs), Keyvan Bajan (6yrs) & Reza Khandan (3.5yrs), members of Iran Writers Association were charged with “collusion against national security & propaganda against regime,” bc they attended “Chain Murders” victims and protesting anniversary censorship . # IranTruth pic.twitter.com/ixEoagVA4g
IranTrue (@iran_true) September 24, 2020
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See also: Pressure intensifies against writers and artists in Iran
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