At least 15 women have been among jailed protesters, according to a news release by Human Rights Watch on August 31, 2018. The NGO called for the freedom of jailed protesters including 15 women in Iran prisons.
The news release reads in part: “Iranian authorities should drop all charges brought against protesters for peaceful assembly and release those detained on that basis, Human Rights Watch said today. Since August 2, 2018, authorities have detained more than 50 people during protests in Tehran.
“On July 31, a new wave of protests against the deteriorating economic conditions and perceptions of government corruption began in the city of Esfahan and quickly spread to other cities, including Karaj in Alborz province and Tehran, the capital.”
On August 11, 2018, Mehdi Mahmoudian, an Iranian journalist, tweeted that authorities had detained 15 women they had arrested during the August protests in Qarchak prison in Tehran, HRW said.
He mentioned the names of the arrested women and said, “Almost 10 days after the protests in Tehran, dozens of people, including 15 women are still being held in prison.
“Most of the detained women are middle aged or older. Ms. Fatemeh Dizaji is one of them, who has been temporarily released from Qarchak Prison due to the death of her child.
“Elaheh Bahmani, Khadijeh Kiani-zadeh and Hadiseh Sabouri are other detainees who have been taken away from their children for almost 10 days and are in an uncertain condition.
“Sara Malek-Shirazi and Mojhdeh Rajabi are other detainees in Qarchak Prison who were only passing by the locations of the protests and did not have direct connections to the unrests. They were arrested and taken to Evin Prison and then transferred to Qarchak Prison,” he concluded.
The NCRI Women’s Committee has not independently confirmed the names but these figures should be considered the least and the actual figures of arrest and detention of women during the August protests is higher.
Rassoul Sanaii Rad, political deputy for the IRGC, confessed to the role of women in national protests, saying, “For the first time, 28 percent of the arrests in the protests were women.”
Referring to the arrests of women in the protests last winter, he noted, “Previously, the number of women arrested in the protests was 5 to 7 percent.” (The state-run Mehr News Agency – August 15, 2018)
During the nationwide uprisings in Iran last December and January, a total of 50 people were killed and at least 8,000 people were arrested.
