A teacher rights activist in Mahabad was sentenced to 15 months in prison.

Yaser Amini-Azar, a teacher and union activist from Mahabad, was sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Mahabad Islamic Revolutionary Court.

The Kurdistan Human Rights Network reported on Wednesday, September 26, that Yasser Amini Azar, a teacher and union activist, was sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Mahabad Islamic Revolutionary Court on charges of “acting against national security.” The sentencing order states that “the defendant’s crime and the verdict of conviction were justified by the evidence and the laws and judicial precedents in the case.”

In another part of this ruling, rejecting the appeal, it is stated that the verdict is final.

In late May of this year, a group of teachers from Marivan held a protest rally on the way to Zarivar Lake in support of imprisoned teachers and in protest of the arrest of this union activist from Mahabad, holding a number of placards and handwritten notes of their demands.

Yaser Amini-Azar was arrested by security forces on Tuesday, May 7, while leaving school and transferred to the Urmia Intelligence Department detention center.

This union activist was temporarily released on May 20 after posting a bail of 50 million Tomans until the end of the proceedings.

This is not the first time that teachers have been sentenced to prison in Iran. In late August of this year, Mohammad Taghi Fallahi, the secretary general of the Tehran Teachers' Union, was sentenced by a court to eight months in prison and 10 lashes.

Also in mid-July, "Hamid Rahmati", a member of the Isfahan Teachers' Association, was sentenced by Branch 103 of the Do Shahreza Criminal Court to three years in prison, 74 lashes, and a fine of 2 million Tomans.

In May of this year, when teachers held protests in more than thirty cities across the country against the monetization and privatization of education, their gatherings were severely suppressed and many of them were arrested. Some of them faced heavy sentences and were sent to prison for “gathering and colluding to commit a crime against national security,” “propaganda against the system,” and “disturbing public order.”

Not long ago, the US State Department wrote about the situation of Iranian teachers in its latest human rights report, mentioning at least three leaders of teachers' unions in Iran who are in prison with unjust sentences.

Source: Voice of America