Sakineh Parvaneh, a political prisoner held in the women’s ward of Evin Prison, has been denied the right to make phone calls to her family for over nine months, since September 2024. This prolonged deprivation, reportedly enforced through an official directive and under the direct order of a judge, has drawn criticism as a clear example of increased pressure on political prisoners in Iran.
Throughout this time, Ms. Parvaneh has repeatedly protested the decision, describing it as unlawful and inhumane. She has demanded that her right to communicate with her family be restored. However, no official response or effective action has been taken by Evin Prison authorities or the Iranian judiciary.
This punitive measure is widely viewed as part of the Iranian regime’s systematic and repressive policies aimed at breaking the spirit of political prisoners and exerting psychological pressure on them.
Sakineh Parvaneh was transferred from Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad to Evin Prison on April 3, 2024. Months after her relocation, the restrictions imposed on her communication continue to persist.
This punitive measure was imposed after Sakineh Parvaneh staged a hunger strike in May 2024, in protest of the dire prison conditions and in solidarity with families who had lost their children during the 2022 protests. Her deprivation of phone calls began on September 14, 2024, and remains in effect to this day.
Who is Sakineh Parvaneh?
Sakineh Parvaneh was born in 1988. In early autumn of 2019, security agents arrested her because she had visited her family in Soleimaniya, in Kurdistan of Iraq. They took her to the Iran-Iraq border. She was detained for ten days in the detention centers of Marivan and Sanandaj. She was subsequently transferred to the Evin Prison in Tehran.
She underwent harsh interrogations under psychological and physical torture in Ward 2A, Ward 209, and the women’s ward of Evin. During this time, she was deprived of having visitations.
In March 2020, after she wrote graffiti on the walls of Evin, she was sent to the notorious Qarchak Prison, where she was detained in solitary confinement for four days with handcuffs and foot cuffs. Then, prison guards took her to Aminabad Psychiatric Hospital in Shahr-e Rey. After 25 days in Aminabad, Sakineh Parvaneh was returned to the quarantine ward of Qarchak Prison.
On May 25, 2020, she went on a hunger strike to protest being sentenced to 5 years in prison, banned for two years from membership in political groups, and detained in conditions where the category of their crimes did not separate prisoners.
On July 4, 2020, she was returned to Evin Prison while bearing scars and bruises from being beaten. In August, she was sentenced to another two years for “rioting in prison.”
Ms. Parvaneh went on a hunger strike several times in Evin.
On October 27, 2020, she was relocated from the women’s ward of Evin to the Prison of Quchan. She was sent to a solitary cell on November 9, 2020, in response to her hunger strike since October 31 in protest of her possible relocation again to the Prison of Isfahan. On the eighth day of her hunger strike, she sewed her lips. But in these same conditions, she was brutalized and beaten by guards.
On December 13, 2020, Sakineh Parvaneh was taken from Quchan Prison to the Central Prison of Mashhad, where she was deprived of family visitation and banned from calling home.
The IRGC pressured Ms. Parvaneh to make forced confessions against herself.
Sakineh Parvaneh was serving the fourth year of her sentence when she was released from Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad on February 15, 2023.
According to reports on social media, the IRGC confiscated all of Sakineh Parvaneh’s registration documents about four years ago. Despite her release from prison, her documents were not returned to her. As a result, Ms. Parvaneh faced difficulties in basic aspects of her life, such as renting a house, finding employment, purchasing a mobile phone SIM card, and other essential matters.
