Giti Pourfazel, Signatory of 14 Women Activists’ Statement, Arrested
Giti Pourfazel, a human rights lawyer and member of the Central Council of the National Front of Iran, has been arrested. She is one of the signatories of the statement by 14 women activists calling for Khamenei’s resignation. To date, six of the signatories of this statement have been arrested.
The National Front of Iran announced Saturday evening, September 2 (August 24), the arrest of Giti Pourfazel, a human rights lawyer and member of its Central Council. According to the National Front’s statement, Pourfazel’s family has no information about the arresting authority or her place of detention.
Pourfazel is one of the signatories of the statement by 14 women activists, which was published approximately three weeks ago (August 5, 2019). The authors of this statement call for a transition away from the Islamic Republic and the removal of Ayatollah Khamenei. This human rights lawyer is the sixth signatory of this statement to be arrested over the past three weeks, one after another. Narges Mohammadi, Farrangis Mazloom, Fatima Sepehri, Shahla Jahanbin, and Shahla Entesari were arrested in recent days in Tehran, Mashhad, and Rasht.
The statement of 14 women activists stated: “Four decades of the rule of absolute guardianship of the jurist has resulted in the inhumane elimination of half of the country’s population, ‘with all their capacities and abilities,’ from equal citizenship rights and human dignity.”
The authors of this statement say: “Many of our fundamental and human rights as Iranian women have been stripped away, and our female identity and identity have come under the guardianship of absolute velayat and male identity and patriarchal culture, and anyone who dares to protest against this gender discrimination has faced insult, humiliation, beatings, imprisonment, and in some cases torture and execution!”
These 14 women activists call for “a secular democratic government that preserves Iran’s territorial integrity.” A government “that can guarantee women’s rights in society.” They emphasized: “We, 14 civil activists and women’s rights advocates, are determined to continue our struggle in a civil and non-violent manner, as pioneers of freedom of our homeland, by saying ‘no to the Islamic Republic’ until we achieve our full demands.”
Pourfazel was the lawyer for Sattar Beheshti’s family in the case of torture and death of this blogger in a police detention facility.
Source: DW
