Author: Frieda Afary

During the past month,  over 20  fires and explosions have damaged a variety of sites in Iran,  ranging from the Natanz nuclear fuel production site to Parchin,  a military and weapons development base,   various power plants,  production plants,  the state television and radio station,  the Evin prison,  a medical clinic,  several markets, forests and historical sites.

Below is an article which Sara Abbas, Yasser Munif and I published on June 3 on the website of the Global Prison Abolitionist Coalition.

While the COVID-19 virus continues to prey on vulnerable lives in Iran and across the globe, the governments of the US and Iran have both turned the crisis into another episode of political rivalry and propaganda exchange between themselves, erasing the root causes of the country’s healthcare crisis and turning the lives of 80 million people into a bargaining chip for political and economic gains.

This panel offers an overview of the prison and refugee camp populations and situations in the U.S., Syria and Iran.   It will address some key obstacles to the formation of a global prison abolitionist movement,  offer ways of overcoming them and present ideas about an alternative to the capitalist carceral and authoritarian system.  Please click on the link below and raise the volume to view this panel.

In Iran, the prison population is approximately 240,000, with no accurate count of political prisoners. The Iranian government’s effort to cover up the spread of the virus until late February   has led to Iran’s population suffering the highest coronavirus death toll in the MENA region so far. There are currently reports of riots in prisons in Tabriz, Azarbaijan, Saqez, Kurdistan, Ahvaz, Khuzestan, Hamedan, as well as a hunger strike of 200 women prisoners in Urmia …