Nosrat Beheshti on hunger strike: My crime is "being cultural"

Nosrat Beheshti, a teacher imprisoned in Iran, announced that she has been on a hunger strike since Tuesday, November 25, in protest of her temporary detention and "unacceptable charges."

Ms. Beheshti announced in a statement: "I have been held indefinitely in the Intelligence Department and Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad for three months now. My only crime is participating in teachers' union gatherings to defend the rights and equalize the rights of teachers with other government employees."

The retired teacher, who is 60 years old and has six children, called the accusations against him "absurd" and said his only crime was his "culturalism."

Nusrat Beheshti, stating that the number of charges against her is increasing every day, says, "It seems like it's intentional."

She is one of 14 women who signed a letter calling for the resignation of Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In June 2019, fourteen political and civil society activists issued a statement calling for Khamenei to resign and change Iran’s constitution. They said the current constitution had created “a dictatorial parliament, a powerless government, and an independent judiciary.”

In mid-August of the same year, 14 female civil activists, considering the inequalities and problems of women in Iran, published a letter calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the drafting of a new constitution.

The Islamic Republic's security officials accused the signatories of these letters of attempting to "plan a new sedition" and arrested many of the signatories of these two letters, some of whom were temporarily released after a while, while others remain in detention.

Source: Voice of America