Zahra Hemmati, General Director of the Welfare Organization in Ilam Province, confirmed the news of the suicide of an 11-year-old girl called Zeinab. Hemmati said that Zeinab was the 11-year-old daughter in a family of five. This family, which is covered by the Welfare Organization, is very poor and under economic strain and lack of basic amenities. Zeinab’s father has a physical disability. The family lives in a 50-meter squared home without a roof. The family was told to take out a loan, but they did not have guarantor and therefore were unable to do so. The extreme poverty of the family and their lack of basic life necessities depressed Zeinab to the point where she eventually committed suicide. Zeinab’s clothes were so worn out and unusable that she tried to burn them so that other children would not see her clothes after her death.
During the Coronavirus crisis, the closure of businesses and the unemployment of many workers and employees have made life much more difficult for the majority of Iranians who already lived below the poverty line. However, two months after the outbreak, the regime’s financial aid for families “under strain” has been announced as only about 200,000 to 600,000 tomans ($47.5 – $142.5).
More than 80 percent of the people of Iran live under the poverty line and the middle class has diminished altogether. The poverty line stood at 8 million tomans in 2019, and is forecaster to stand at 10 million in 2020.
Poverty is among the main contributors to suicides among women in Iran. The large number of young mothers and pregnant women among suicide victims is a phenomenon caused by the immense pressure endured by poor and low-income families in Iran. Now, young girls are joining this throng.
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The woman’s son suffered from depression after his father had succumbed to the deadly Coronavirus. His depression was aggravated by the fact that the family was unable to hold a proper funeral or mourning ceremony, and he committed suicide. The bereaved mother could not bear the loss of both her son and husband. She ended her own life two days after her son’s death (The state-run Rokna news agency – April 12, 2020). The shocking suicide is an example of women who in the absence of any form of social support in Iran are left totally defenseless while facing often insurmountable challenges. The catastrophic spread of the Coronavirus in Iran has had a tremendous impact on the population and especially the lower-income families and has contributed significantly to the spread of social harm in society including suicide. The Health Committee of Tehran’s City Council told Sharq daily on April 15, 2020, that in the best case scenario 70 and in the worst case scenario more than 100 people die due to Covid-19 in Tehran on a daily basis. Such, fatalities are 4,000 to 6,000 only in Tehran. The Iranian Resistance announced on April 15, 2020, that the Coronavirus death toll had exceeded 29,000 in 278 cities.
The regime’s deputy Health Minister also acknowledged that 800,000 people infected in Iran and that the number of those who have died is several times the number that is officially announced by the regime. In such circumstances, the clerical regime has provided no assistance to any families, and the token aid they have offered is still not granted to anyone.
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Sakineh was interrogated for 10 days in Ward 209 of Evin Prison, where she was held in solitary confinement. She was later transferred to the women’s ward at Evin, where she scrawled anti-regime slogans on the walls and for which she was punished. Prison guards beat her while her hands and feet were bound. She was later sent into exile in Qarchak Prison.
After 4 days of solitary confinement in Qarchak, Ms. Parvaneh was transferred to Aminabad Psychiatric Hospital in Shahr-e-Rey.
The interrogator set her bail at 50 million Tomans – an amount her family cannot afford. Ms. Parvaneh remains in custody.
The regime routinely sends political prisoners to psychiatric hospitals under the pretext of mental illness. This is a common method of repressing both political prisoners and their family members.
Dual-national Nazanin Zaghari, and student activist Soha Mortezaii, are among those women who have been sent to psychiatric hospitals.
Operatives from the Intelligence Office at Tehran University had threatened Ms. Mortezaii and her family, saying she would be transferred to a mental hospital and given electroshock therapy “to bring her to her senses” if she did not stop holding a sit-in on campus.
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Maliheh Shoorcheh, the mother of lawyer and political prisoner Soheila Hijab, wrote a letter to regime officials expressing concern over the health of political prisoners in Iran and calling for the release of all prisoners. In her letter dated April 8, 2020, Ms. Shoorcheh specifically mentioned the names of female political prisoners detained in Evin Prison and called for their immediate release.
In a letter dated April 3, 2020, the Mothers of Laleh Park warned of the massacre of prisoners by judicial and security officials: “They deliberately intend to kill political prisoners and their families. The regime’s Judiciary not only endangers prisoners and their families and even its personnel, but also refuses to stop arrests, summons and trials… Handing down heavy sentences continues shamelessly and successively.”
The Mothers of Laleh Park called on the World Health Organization and all international institutions and organizations to put pressure on the mullahs’ regime and compel them to release prisoners.
The letter from the Mothers of Laleh Park also states that the children of human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh were allowed to visit her after 35 days. According to them, the visitation hall is prone to the spread of Coronavirus for being overcrowded.
Also, the brother of political prisoner Narges Mohammadi who was banished to Zanjan Prison, protested in a letter against the refusal to release prisoners and called on the Judiciary to remove the condition of a sentence of less than 5 years in prison for granting leave to prisoners and to pay attention to the age and health conditions of prisoners. In the letter, he also reported the suicide of a prisoner in the women’s ward of Zanjan Prison in protest to discrimination in the release of prisoners.
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Behfar Lalehzari, the husband of this political prisoner, said that judicial officials did not agree to her request for leave. He added that he provides his wife with epilepsy treatment almost every week with great difficulty and delivers it to prison officials, but often some of the drugs are lost along the way from the prison entrance to the clinic.
Regarding the refusal to grant prison leave to the epileptic prisoner Rezvaneh Ahmad Khan Beigi, Behfar Lalehzari said that the authorities are literally putting a price on people’s lives. Judicial officials have announced that no leave would be granted for security offenders with prison sentences of more than five years. This is in the context of the fact that in the women’s ward of Evin Prison, people have been infected with Coronavirus and the lives of women political prisoners are in danger. Rezvaneh Ahmad Khan Beigi, born in 1990, went on a hunger strike on Monday, March 16, 2019 to protest the prison authorities’ refusal to grant her leave from prison. Rezvaneh was sentenced to six years in prison in February 2020 in addition to her previous sentences. She had previously been sentenced by the Tehran Revolutionary Court to four years and five months in prison. After her arrest on November 17, 2019, Rezvaneh was first interrogated in Ward A2 of Evin Prison and then transferred to the Women’s Ward of Evin Prison. Atena Daemi is another prisoner in the women’s ward of Evin Prison who suffers from an illness and is deprived of leave. During her years in captivity, the female political prisoner suffered from a number of illnesses, including numbness in her hands and feet, and internal infections such as kidney infections. However, she was not granted leave despite the Coronavirus prevalence in Evin Prison.
