Imprisoned Yaresan women have started a hunger strike in Qarchak Prison of Varamin on Sunday, June 17, 2018, in the wake of their being attacked and beaten up on Wednesday, June 13, 2018.
Families of imprisoned Yaresan women gathered outside Qarchak Prison in Varamin on June 14 and 15, 2018, protesting the brutalization of the imprisoned Yaresan women and demanding to visit them. Their requests have not been accorded, yet.
Yaresan women imprisoned in Qarchak Prison of Varamin were badly beaten up and brutalized on Wednesday, June 13, 2018, by special prison guards using batons and shockers. Some of these women are reportedly in critical conditions and have been transferred individually to different prison wards. They had already been deprived of having any telephone contact with their families for three weeks.
In addition to the families of imprisoned Yaresan women, a number of dervishes imprisoned in wards 2 and 3 of the Greater Tehran’s Penitentiary held a sit-in protest on June 14 and 15, 2018, in protest to the beating of Yaresan women imprisoned in Qarchak Prison. They demanded end to violence against Yaresan women in Qarchak and their immediate release from prison.
Husbands and other members of the families of imprisoned Yaresan women are generally imprisoned in the Greater Tehran’s Penitentiary. Prison guards have disconnected the phones to prevent the imprisoned men from obtaining news of their wives and sisters.
Eleven Yaresan women were transferred to Qarchak Prison on February 20, 2018, after the bloody crackdown of the peaceful demonstration and gathering of Gonabadi Dervishes in Tehran. Although the arrested women had been badly injured and needed urgent medical care, the prison’s medical staff refused to provide them care.
Sepideh Moradi, Sima Entesari, Shima Entessari, Avisha Jalaleddin, Shokoufeh Yadollahi, Maryam Farsiani, Nazilla Noori, Maryam Barakouhi, Elham Ahmadi and Sedigheh Safabakht have been detained since February 20, 2018, in Qarchak Prison under inhuman conditions.
According to Judiciary and State Security Force officials as well as Yaresan sources, more than 300 dervishes have been arrested and incarcerated during the bloody crackdown on their peaceful protest in Tehran on February 20, 2018. So far, some 150 of them have received short and long-term prison sentences.
