Iran Authorities Won’t Explain Why Teachers’ Rights Activist is Being Held Incommunicado in Mental Hospital بازداشت هاشم خواستار و انتقال به بیمارستان روانی توسط سپاه پاسداران: «او هیچ گونه سابقه بیماری روانی ندارد؛ مشخص نیست چه اتفاقی افتاده»
OCTOBER
26, 2018
Iranian authorities have
refused to allow the family of a teacher’s rights activist any access to him or
provide them with any information about his condition or case after he was
arrested and admitted to a psychiatric hospital, the Center for Human Rights in
Iran (CHRI) has learned.
A close friend of Hashem
Khastar told CHRI that the activist has no history of mental illness. It’s also
unclear whether Khastar was admitted to the mental hospital against his will
after being arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC)
Intelligence Organization.
According to Article 3 of
Iran’s Guidelines for Mental Rehabilitation Centers for Acute Mental
Patients, “If the patient has not been diagnosed as
mentally disabled by the Medical Board or a judicial body, his/her consent is
necessary to be admitted for treatment.”
However, Iranian law gives
security forces and the judiciary the upper hand in all legal cases involving
activists and other individuals targeted by Iran’s security establishment. It
is also not known whether Khastar has been given access to a lawyer.
Khastar, a retired teacher and
member of the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Association (ITTA), went missing in
Mashhad, the capital of Khorasan Razavi Province, on October 23, 2018. He has a
history of being arrested for engaging in peaceful activism.
Independent unions are not allowed to
operate in Iran and labor rights activists who attempt to organize workers and
bargain collectively are prosecuted under national security charges and
sentenced to long prison sentences.
Fears of Coerced Confession of
Worse
After frantically searching for
him, Khastar’s family finally located the hospital where he is being held but
the authorities have refused to inform them about the reason for his arrest,
hospitalization or condition.
“When we went to judicial
offices to look for him, they told us they don’t know anything and we would be
contacted within 24 hours if there was any information,” Khastar’s friend,
Javad La’l-Mohammadi, told CHRI.
“Then, on the morning of
[October 24] we got a call from the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization and they
told us he had been transferred to a psychiatric hospital for a mental
disorder,” he added. “They didn’t say the name of the hospital and hung up.”
La’l-Mohammadi continued: “We
went looking for Mr. Khastar along with his wife and after a thousand twists
and turns, we found the hospital [Ibn-e Sina and Dr. Hejazi Psychiatry Hospital] and discovered he had been admitted to the wing for acute
patients. They told us the prosecutor had banned any visitation. We asked about
his physical health and why he had been hospitalized in a mental facility but
they didn’t give us any answers. We talked to the head of the hospital and he
didn’t tell us anything either and against his Hippocratic Oath, he ordered the
security guards to take me and Mr. Khastar’s wife and son out of the building.
We are still wondering why he’s in a mental hospital.”
La’l-Mohammadi added: “His
family and I, as people who know him, can attest that he has no history of
mental illness or treatment at a psychiatric facility and has never taken any
prescription medication. We don’t know what happened that led to his
hospitalization in a ward for acute mental patients and the authorities are not
talking.”
La’l-Mohammadi also told CHRI
that the family fears that Khastar could be coerced to make false statements
and that they fear for his life after learning that an activist in Tehran was
found dead in his car this month.
“Were they trying to extract
confessions? Did they beat him up? Anything he says under such circumstances
has no validity but what worries us is that this may be part of a plan to
intimidate opponents… like the gruesome murder of Mr. Farshid Hakki,” he said.
Hakki was a prominent activist
whose charred corpse was found in the trunk of
his car near his home in Tehran on October 17.
No comments:
Post a Comment