Twelve Iranian political prisoners have started a hunger strike to protest the deaths of the two Nationalist-religious political prisoners in the past month, Haleh Sahabi and Reza Hoda Saber.
Kaleme cites a letter provided to the opposition site by “anonymous supporters of the Green Movement at Evin Prison.”
The strikers include jailed journalists and political activists such as Emadeddin Baghi, Bahman Ahmadi Amouyi, Amir-Khosro Delirsani and Abdollah Momeni.
In the letter, the prisoners say: “Marking the birth of Imam of justice, Imam Ali, and in memory of the martyrs of the Green Movement from Neda to Haleh and from Sohrab to Saber, we express our condolences and sympathies to the families of the martyrs…and begin a hunger strike in protest.”
The prisoners express hope that the “peaceful movement of Iran continues its path and prevents such disasters from repeating.”
Neda Agha-Soltan and Sohrab Aarabi were two protesters shot on the streets of Tehran in 2009, in the early days of the widespread protests that sprang up to contest the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Haleh Sahabi, a temporarily released political prisoner, died this month at the funeral of her father after it was raided by the Islamic Republic security forces.
The following day, Hoda Saber went on a hunger strike in prison to protest Sahabi’s death. Ten days into his strike he too died from a massive heart attack. His family and the opposition accused authorities of delaying his transfer to hospital, and his fellow prisoners have reported that he was badly beaten on the eighth day of his hunger strike.
Today’s announcement by the political prisoners says the death of Hoda Saber has posed “a great challenge to the legitimacy” of the Islamic Republic for having “arbitrarily imprisoned him for ten months without any clear charges against him” and the neglect of his health after he began his strike.
