Reporters Without Borders joins the families and lawyers of imprisoned Kurdish-Iranian journalists Adnan Hassanpour and Abdolvahed “Hiva” Botimar in urging them to call off the hunger strike they began on 14 July. The two journalists are currently under sentence of death.
“They are now on the 47th day of their hunger strike and their condition is very worrying,” the press freedom organisation said. “We obviously respect their perseverance and we support their demands, but they are putting their lives at risk.”
Reporters Without Borders added: “We demand that the judicial authorities keep their promises and improve the conditions in which they are being held, above all by allowing them the right to receive visits and to phone their lawyers and their families. The supreme court must also agree to review their convictions and quash their death sentences.”
Hassanpour and Botimar, who are being held in a ministry of intelligence detention centre in Sanandaj, in Iran’s Kurdish northwest region, were allowed to receive a visit from relatives and one of their lawyers, Sirvan Hoshmandi, on 25 August. It was only the second visit they have been allowed since their arrest last December.
Hassanpour’s mother and Botimar’s wife reported that they appear to be very weak and have lost a lot of weight. They said they have asked Hassanpour and Botimar to abandon the hunger strike, in which they are consuming nothing but water to which a small amount of sugar is added.
Hassanpour and Botimar began the hunger strike to press their demands for improved conditions of detention, an end to their solitary confinement and their transfer to a prison in the city of Marivan where their families live. The also want a meeting with a senior justice department representative and the right to see their lawyers whenever they want.
Hassanpour and Botimar, who write for the magazine Asou, were sentenced to death on 16 July by a revolutionary tribunal in Marivan for spying, “subversive activities against national security” and “separatist propaganda.”
