Iran: More than a year since Iranians’ uprising for freedom, hundreds killed and tortured, and thousands remain in arbitrary imprisonment

Photo: Alexandros Michailidis (Shutterstock)

28 September: More than a year since Iranians took to the streets demanding an end to decades of oppression, the authorities continue their brutal crackdown on all forms of dissent. PEN International, with over 90 PEN Centres united during its online Congress, calls for the immediate release of all those arbitrarily imprisoned because of their peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of expression.

In response to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, which were sparked by the death in custody of a young Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa (Jina) Amini, in September 2022, Iranian authorities have escalated their crackdown on freedom of expression. Security agencies have brutally suppressed the protests that swept across the country, resulting in hundreds of people being killed or injured and thousands arrested, tortured, and arbitrarily imprisoned. Authorities have also escalated their use of the death penalty to crush protests, with at least 14 individuals sentenced to death, four of whom were executed between December 2022 and January 2023. In addition, they have restricted access to internet services, including by imposing widespread internet outages, in order to limit information about their harsh response. The crackdown has been particularly severe in ethnic minority provinces such as Kurdistan.

Over the past twelve months, hundreds of political activists, workers, teachers, and students have been arrested, tortured, and killed. Dozens of writers, poets, and artists have also faced threats, detention, torture, or other forms of intimidation, in some cases for supporting the protest movement, and in others because of their history of dissident writing or expression.

They join the already numerous imprisoned writers in Iran whose situations are of grave concern to PEN. These include the writer and human rights defender Narges Mohammadi, who was sentenced to an additional year in prison in August 2023 in retaliation for her writings and activism in support of the uprising; Baha’i poet Mahvash Sabet, who is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence for her religious beliefs and has been brutally tortured while in prison; and translator Anisha Asadollahi and her husband, writer, translator, activist Keyvan Mohtadi, member of the Iranian Writers’ Association (IWA) who is serving a six-year sentence and has reportedly been held in solitary confinement for reciting a poem in prison.

PEN International strongly condemns the severe crackdown on freedom of expression in Iran and the mistreatment of writers, poets, journalists, artists, and all those who courageously champion universal human rights, and freedom of expression. We stand in solidarity with Iran’s literary community and support the Iranian people’s calls for freedom and respect of their fundamental rights.