Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, detained in Iran since September 2018

Twenty human rights organizations have called on Iran to release women political prisoners amid the Coronavirus epidemic.

In the statement published on the website of the International Federation for Human Rights, the organizations note that a Parliamentary report that deaths may be twice the official total of 5,481, and cases may be up to 10 times greater than the Health Ministry’s figure of 87,026.

The signatories continue:

The situation is even worse in Iran’s prisons. In February, the UN released a report documenting how the unsanitary and overcrowded prison conditions in Iran were already causing the spread of other infectious diseases….At that point, the women’s ward in Evin Prison, where a large number of the female prisoners of conscience are detained in cramped and unsanitary spaces, had already run out of medical and cleaning supplies….

These prisoners of conscience are confined to a room with 18 women and sleep on triple bunk beds with little space in between.

Iran’s judiciary has granted temporary furloughs to more than 100,000 prisoners since late March; however, many political prisoners and foreign nationals remain behind bars.

They include French academic Fariba Adelkhah; Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert; American oil executive Siamak Namazi; eight environmentalists, including Anglo-American-Iranian national Morad Tahbaz; human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh; human rights activists Narges Mohammadi and Arash Sadeghi; Swedish permanent resident Ahmadreza Djalali; and Austrian-Iranian nationals Kamran Ghaderi and Massud Mossaheb.

Last week, UN human rights experts appealed to Tehran: “The immediate release by the Iranian judiciary of these individuals and other prisoners of conscience could save their lives.”

Iran Daily: Coronavirus — UN Calls for Release of Political Prisoners and Foreign Nationals

The human rights organizations assert:

Authorities have thus far refused to release hundreds of peaceful political prisoners. This is no judicial oversight. It is part of a policy that looks to further punish political prisoners by keeping them in dangerous prison conditions.

They urge “governments, non-governmental organizations, journalists, the United Nations and other international organizations to put pressure on the Iranian authorities”.

The signatories include EA WorldView partner Arseh Sevom; the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights; European Parliament Vice-President Heidi Hautala for the Community of Sakharov Prize Laureates; the Center for Human Rights in Iran; and the Center of Defenders of Human Rights.

The list of political prisoners:

1. Nasrin Sotoudeh
2. Fariba Adelkhah
3. Kylie Moore-Gilbert
4. Mojgan Keshavarz
5. Saba Kord Afshari
6. Raheleh Ahmadi
7. Yasaman Aryani
8. Monireh Arabshahi
9. Atena Daemi
10. Niloufar Bayani
11. Sepideh Kashani
12. Maryam Akbari Monfared
13. Samaneh Norouz Moradi
14. Negin Ghadamian
15. Zahra Zehtabchi
16. Rezvaneh Khanbeigi
17. Elham Barmaki
18. Maryam Haj Hosseini
19. Maryam Ebrahimvand
20. Golrokh Iraee Ebrahimi
21. Leila Mirghafari
22. Raha Ahmadi
23. Zohreh Sarv
24. Fatemeh Khishvand
25. Narges Mohammadi
26. Zeinab Jalalian
27. Fatemeh Sepehri
28. Fatemeh Dadvand
29. Mojgan Sayami
30. Fatemeh Asma Esmaeilzadeh
31. Enis Saadet
32. Jaka Esmaeilpour
33. Sheida Najafian
34. Samira Hadian
35. Hajar Ardasi
36. Hakimeh Ahmadi
37. Fatemeh Kohanzadeh
38. Zari Tavakkoli
39. Gita Hor
40. Maryam Mokhtari
41. Saghar Mohammadi
42. Mojgan Eskandari
43. Nahid Behshid
44. Simmin Mohammadi
45. Ehteram Sheikhi
46. Sheida Abedi
47. Masoumeh Ghasemzadeh Malekshah
48. Yalda Firouzian
49. Farideh Jaberi
50. Masoumeh Askari