Letter by 350 Artists and Cultural Activists in Support of Ares Amiri
A group of Iranian artists, writers, and cultural activists have sent a letter to the heads of the three branches of government calling for a review of the sentence imposed on Ares Amiri Larijanani, a detained student at Kingston University in Iran.
More than 350 Iranian artists, writers, and cultural activists have sent a letter to representatives of parliament, Ibrahim Raisi, Hassan Rouhani, Ali Larijanani, and the heads of Iran’s judicial, executive, and legislative branches, calling for a review of the 10-year prison sentence handed down to Ares Amiri Larijanani.
Ares Amiri Larijanani, a master’s student in Philosophy of Art at Kingston University in Britain, was arrested on December 14, 2017, when she traveled to Iran to visit her family, on charges of “acting against national security.” She was temporarily released on bail of 500 million tomans in June 2018. She was arrested again in September 2018 and received a 10-year prison sentence in April 2019.
According to a letter published on the Facebook page of Mohsen Omrani, a relative of Ares Amiri, she is described as a promising young woman who “through presenting Iranian art and culture on the international stage, has made and continues to make a significant contribution to reminding the world of this country’s history and culture and gaining respect for it among the people of the world.”
Ares Amiri, who previously sent a letter to Ibrahim Raisi complaining about her 10-year prison sentence, states that the reason given for her arrest was her work at the “British Council,” which had an official office in Iran until 2008.
She says that after six years of study in Britain, she applied for the position of Iran’s cultural officer at the British Council through a job advertisement and was an ordinary employee at the institution.
Amiri wrote that her defenses were never heard; that she only holds Iranian citizenship, had no access to classified or confidential information, and merely had ideas for cultural programs that were never implemented: “The judicial system of the country should clarify which group, organization, or entity my actions constitute the formation or management of according to this article? The British Council or the Iran section of the British Council?”
She also wrote that after explicitly rejecting requests from security agencies to cooperate, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In a letter signed by more than 350 cultural activists, which includes the names of well-known artists such as Hedayeh Tehrani, a film actress, Esmail Khoi, a poet, and Mehdi Zare, a writer, the signatories called for support of art in Iran and “support for art and all those” who “love it and play a role in recognizing and introducing it.”
The letter continues: “People like Ares Amiri who introduce Iranian art to the people of the world deserve support and appreciation, not prison and slander and deprivation.”
The authors of the letter have requested that Ares Amiri’s prison sentence be reviewed “in order to support Iran’s cultural and artistic community and its members both inside and outside the country” and to create an atmosphere of “encouragement and enthusiasm for those” who “each, in their own view, have a role in introducing and preserving the values, customs, and art of this land.”
In her letter to Ibrahim Raisi, Ares Amiri wrote that the British Council is a 100 percent state institution that was established 85 years ago, and its Iran section has existed for 77 years: “It is now unclear on what basis, logic, and legal reasoning I am being presented as the founder or administrator of an institution that was active more than 50 years before my birth, and how my work at this British state institution constitutes a crime under Article 498 of the Islamic Penal Code?”
She asked the head of Iran’s judicial branch to “investigate and pursue the unlawful actions and insults directed at herself and her family.”
Source: DW
