A group of Iranian journalists has called for the release of Azarpeik who is being kept incommunicado after being detained
More than 140 Iranian journalists have called on authorities to release Saba Azarpeik, who was picked up last month from the offices of a magazine in Tehran and is currently being held incommunicado.
Azarpeik, who has written for various reformist publications including Etemaad daily, has been outspoken about the state’s treatment of journalists and opposition figures. She was arrested while working in the offices of Tejarat-e-Farda, a Tehran-based reformist weekly.
In a statement seen by the Guardian, a group of Iranian journalists protested against her arrest, saying it was against the Islamic republic’s own constitution and human rights treaties to detain her for merely doing her job.
“It is both illegal and dangerous that neither Saba’s family nor the public has information about her current whereabouts,” it said. The statement was signed by journalists based inside and outside the country including Zeinab Esmaili, Behrooz Samadbeigi, Fereshteh Ghazi, Mana Neyestani, Maryam Amousa, Masoud Behnoud, Mahsa Amrabadi and Newsha Saremi.
In the light of the news blackout of her arrest by the authorities, it was still unclear on Monday which political institution was behind Azarpeik’s arrest and which prison she was being held in. It was also not clear if she had access to a lawyer.
The statement expressed regret that Iran’s judiciary was not being responsible concerning Azarpeik’s legal rights and freedom of speech while in custody.
“We want Saba Azarpeik to be freed,” it said. “We want her human and legal rights to be respected and we demand information about her health situation in jail.”
The statement called on the government of Hassan Rouhani and its cultural ministry to confront Azarpeik’s detention. The harassment of journalists has continued under Rouhani in Iran but his administration has little to do with the arrests, often carried out by the security apparatus.
Azarpeik was particularly outspoken on her Facebook page, which has been taken offline since she was detained. In recent years, she has drawn a great deal of attention by covering the case of the Iranian blogger Sattar Beheshti, whose death in custody brought embarrassment for the Islamic republic and its cyber police.
In Iran, dozens of journalists and bloggers remain in jail, where some have been subjected to humiliating physical abuse, including being forced to run a gauntlet of guards armed with batons.
In recent years, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has documented the mistreatment of journalists in Iran, which was the world’s second largest jailer of journalists in 2013, behind Turkey. In April, the CPJ reported that at least seven journalists were beaten in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
Posted by Saeed Kamali Dehghan
The Guardian