As November 4th – the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran – approaches along with chances that a large number of people will participate to commemorate the event, a group of social activists including those from the One Million Signature Campaign for Gender Equality, student activists and other non-government organization were summoned to the revolutionary prosecutor’s office.
Five members of the Campaign were summoned by mail and a larger number was summoned by phone. This comes amid the threats and pressure that has been applied to student activists in recent days on the various pretexts.
Among Campaign members who have been summoned are Khadijeh Moghadam. Jelveh Javaheri, Kaveh Mozafari, Parisa Kakai and Maryam Malek, all of whom received written summons. The reason for the summons as mentioned in the letter is to “clarify some issues.” In this regard, Khadijeh Moghadam, a well-known woman activist from the Campaign who has been interrogated repeatedly and even spent time in prison, told Rooz, “Carrying my summons, I went to the court along with my attorney and was astounded to find out that one of the charges against me is the disruption of domestic security, over which I was asked questions.”
Kaveh Mozafari and Jelveh Javaheri too, both members of the Campaign had been summoned in the past. Speaking with Rooz, Kaveh mentioned his previous arrests, as well as his wife’s and said, “Jelveh has already been summoned twice and arrested 5 times while I have been arrested two times.”
Regarding the charges raised against him and his wife during their interrogations, Kaveh Mozafari said, “The charges against Jelveh have so far been actions against national security through publicity against the regime, [a reference to article 500 of the Islamic Penal Code], and conspiracy and demonstrations for the purpose of disrupting peace [article 610 of the same]. I have been charges for the same issues. In addition, there are other charges such as disobeying police orders, disrupting peace, etc. Membership in the One Million Signature Campaign too is a charge brought against Jelveh.
This civil activist said this about the group summon of women activists: “Perhaps these summons are to intimidate and threaten activists, particularly as November 4 is approaching. But since the number of women summoned is large and the Campaign is the target, perhaps security forces are trying to draw up a new scheme against women’s movement in general so that they can implement them under the current political conditions.”
Another member of the women’s movement who did not want to reveal her/his name for fear of reprisal believes that the actual number of Campaign members who have been summoned is larger than what has been publicly revealed and said, “Some of those who have been called by the intelligence group have not given their mailing addresses where their written summons could be sent while other do not want to talk or go to the media about their summons, which is also true for student activists.” This person said that s/he believed that the summons were for the purpose of intimidating and scaring the victims on the eve of the November 4th demonstrations with the purpose of dissuading them from participating in the event. “So long as authorities do not take measures to remove the distrust that has been created among the public since the June 12 elections, protests shall continue.”
