On Monday, January 20, 2025, Parvin Advaei, a Kurdish women’s rights activist and former political prisoner, was arrested after being summoned to the Department of Intelligence in Marivan. She has since been transferred to an undisclosed location.
A week after her arrest, no precise information is available regarding the reasons for her detention, the charges against her, or her current whereabouts.
This is not the first time Parvin Advaei has faced arrest. On July 27, 2019, she was detained by Marivan’s Intelligence Department forces. Following three months of imprisonment, she was released on a hefty bail of 5 billion rials. The Revolutionary Court in Marivan later sentenced her to five years in prison for alleged membership in the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK). The sentence was subsequently reduced to two years by the Provincial Appeals Court.
Parvin Advaei was re-arrested on January 30, 2020, to serve her two-year prison sentence and was transferred to the Sanandaj Correctional Center. On April 6, 2020, after serving approximately six months of her sentence, she was released under the Nowruz Amnesty initiative.
Her recent detention raises serious concerns about the targeting of Kurdish activists and women’s rights defenders in Iran, especially since Pakhshan Azizi and Varisha Moradi, both accused of being members of PJAK, have been sentenced to death.
