‎

Saman Rasoulpour

The judge in the trial of two women activists Ronak Safarzadeh and Hana Abdi charged ‎them with acting against national security by participating in recent bombings in the ‎Kurdish town of Sanandaj and membership in Pejvak group.‎

The judge told IRNA news agency that the arrest of these women had nothing to do with ‎their civil activities and asserted that they pursued the goals of Pejvak opposition group ‎under the guise of civil activities. He also declared that both detainees had confessed that ‎they had been trained by Pejvak to disseminate the views of the group under the cover of ‎legal civil activities.‎

Ronak is a graphics graduate who was arrested in Sanandaj earlier this year. A month ‎later, Hana who was a psychology student was arrested. Both are 21 years old and are ‎members of the Azar Mehr of Sanandaj and the One Million Signature Campaign.‎

In response to these arrests, Iranian and international human rights organizations such as ‎Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have written letters of protest to the ‎Iranian judiciary. ‎

Shahnaz Ahmadi, the mother of Ronak Zafarzadeh had earlier told Rooz about Roonak ‎that she, “worked for women’s. God is my witness that if we gave her 500 Toman, she ‎would spend it all on the poor. She helped village kids. She went to Hassanabad village to ‎help poor students prepare for the national university entrance examination tests without ‎any charge. When she returned, she had no energy to even have dinner. She helped the ‎needy and said they had no money to get help with their studies. She also helped women ‎who had been abandoned.”‎

The same judge had also announced earlier that a number of other individuals had been ‎arrested in Tehran because of their support for Pejvak under the guise of belonging to the ‎One Million Signature Campaign, without naming any individuals. ‎

Earlier, Iran’s official news agency IRNA had reported a story about Maryam ‎Hosseinkhah, another member and activist of the One Million Signature Campaign ‎accusing her of cooperation with Pejvak which was promptly denied by Maryam’s ‎attorney Nasrin Sotoodeh.‎

Three weeks ago, the Intelligence Ministry of the Islamic Republic too had issued a ‎statement which it said that 11 members of Pejvak, a propaganda and military group had ‎been arrested. It described the activities of the detainees in these terms: “Bombing at the ‎Divine Defense Exhibition (divine defense is a term used in Iran for the 8 year war ‎against Iraq); attacking a police station in Sanandaj and putting it on fire; A number of ‎sonic bomb explosions; engaging in propaganda activities for Pejvak against the State.”‎

In a related news story, following the arrest of 3 students Sohrab Karimi, Farshad ‎Doosipour, and Javad Alizadeh after a University of Tehran student gathering, some of ‎the media connected to the state wrote that the three students received orders from ‎Pejvak. In another news story, Hiva Bootimar and Adnan Hassanpour were sentenced to ‎death by a court in the town of Marivan on charges cooperating with armed Kurdish ‎groups and espionage.‎

Hayat-e Azad Kurdestan party (Kurdish Free Life party), aka Pejvak, announced its ‎founding in December 2003. The group announced its goal to be the creation of a ‎‎“Federal Iran”. In recent years, the group has reported bloody armed clashes with the ‎Revolutionary Passdaran Guards, and other state law enforcement agencies, with many ‎casualties.‎

Recent months have witnessed many arrests in the Kurdish populated areas of Iran. ‎Human rights activists in Iranian Kurdistan assert that the heavy charges that are flouted ‎against civil activists is part of a plan to create serious cases against the detainees with the ‎ultimate goal of turning public opinion against Kurdish activists and ending the support ‎of human rights groups for them..‎