Female protesters held in Iran’s Evin Prison and other correctional facilities suffer dire conditions, including limited access to drinking water, squalid hygiene, little or no access to fresh air, and other degradations of basic rights.
Prisons are overcrowded and can only provide water in the showers for two days a week, resulting in hair loss and fears of lice, Iranian human rights activist Atena Daemi reported.
The prison administration does not provide cleaning products for self-hygeine, toilets are not cleaned, and most prisoners are already suffering from infections, she added.
As a form of punishment, prison guards refuse to let inmates use toilets, this results in kidney issues. Meanwhile, poor ventilation causes disease to spread rapidly.
Inmates are allowed 10 minutes outside in the sun per week, despite the law stipulating access to fresh air on a daily basis. If the allotted time to go outside clashes with any other scheduled event, including interrogations, the small allotted window of opportunity is retracted.
There are also major issues of regarding the sanitation of medications, inmates have been forced to take their pills after the hygienic packaging has been broken. Some have reported instances of receiving different coloured pills for the same medication, suggesting tampering.
These violations are reported by prisoners awaiting trial, arrested for protesting the death of Jîna Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who lost her life while in the custody of the Islamic Republic’s morality police.
Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, also currently behind bars at Evin, called on UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran Javaid Rehman to investigate sexual assaults by authorities against female prisoners.
“Assaulting women in custody and incarceration centres is part of the regime’s plan to suppress female protesters and fighters,” Mohammadi said in an Instagram post.
Arash Sadeghi was imprisoned in Evin after he was threatened by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He is held in solitary confinement while suffering serious bone cancer. Sadeghi’s mother was killed at her home by security agents while he was behind bars over his activism, Iran Wire reported. UN experts have called for his immediate release.
The Canadian government “will not stand idly by while the regime’s human rights violations increase in scope and intensity against the Iranian people,” Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said.
Last week Canada introduced new sanctions on four Iranian individuals and five entities “for their roles in the regime’s gross and systematic human rights violations and actions that continue to threaten international peace and security”, Joly said.
The sanctioned individuals include an IRGC official, a senior judge formerly stationed at the Evin Prison Court, and the chief of Iran’s law enforcement special units. Safiran Airport Services coordinating Russian military flights between Iran and Russia, IRGC subsidiary firm Baharestan Kish Company, both involved in the production and export of Iran’s armed drones, and the Javan News Agency for spreading regime propaganda.
“As the Iranian regime continues to clamp down violently on Iranian society, we affirm our solidarity with the people of Iran, who have bravely called out the regime for its human rights abuses—especially those of women and girls. The Iranian regime continues to use fear and violence in suppressing the rights and freedoms of all Iranians. Today, we reiterate our support to those who refuse to endure this repression any longer,” Joly said.