Former student activist on trial for criticizing judiciary officials and suppressing workers on Twitter
A source familiar with the Human Rights Campaign in Iran told the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that Siavash Rezaian, a former student activist at the University of Mazandaran, has been sentenced to three months and one day in prison for his posts on social media criticizing the head of the judiciary and supporting what are known as the “Girls of Revolution Street.”
According to this source, the Mazandaran Provincial Intelligence and Public Security Police arrested and tried the civil activist after monitoring tweets about three issues: criticism of former head of the judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, support for the girls on Enghelab Street, and tweets about the 2018 street protests known as the "nationwide protests."
According to this source, Siavash Rezaei's tweet about Sadegh Larijani was related to a provincial television report on the discovery of hoarding equipment. Rezaei wrote in his now-deleted tweet: "Discovery of ninety billion tomans of hoarding equipment belonging to Habibollah Ardeshir, a relative of the Larijani brothers, and unsealing an hour after the seizure."
The news of the discovery of two warehouses of hoarded rebar in Mazandaran province was reported in many domestic media outlets, including Fars News, without mentioning Habibollah Ardeshir by name.
Campaign has learned that the former student activist has also been questioned for tweets he wrote in support of the Girls of Revolution Street, the imprisoned Dervishes, the Star-Studded Students, and even in some cases in response to statements by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Havad Zarif and the Haft Tappe workers.
Rezaian wrote in one of his tweets: "How can one not support the historic movement #Girls_of_Revolution_Street? I hope all civilized Iranians on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook support this peaceful movement. However, I believe that the frustrated, unemployed, and tired person who protested in the street two weeks ago is right, as are these women."
The Girls of Revolution Street are the girls who went to Tehran's Revolution Street to protest against the mandatory hijab, took off their headscarves, and waved them like a flag in the sky. Many of these girls faced prison sentences after protesting, and some of them left Iran some time later.
Rezaian wrote about the street protests on February 9, 2017, in a tweet about the nationwide protests: "During the protests a few weeks ago, I thought that repression would work and that people might come to the streets again in the coming months or years for various reasons. With the news of the attack on the #Gonabadi_Dervish_Center in #Golestan_Haftam and the arrest of protesting workers in #Haft_Tapeh, it seems like the security forces want protests to happen again."
The street protests of 2017 began in January and continued until February, becoming known as nationwide protests, during which several people, including Sina Ghanbari, Vahid Heydari, and a number of others, died in prison and several thousand people were arrested.
Source: Iran Human Rights Campaign
