Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Story highlightsThe a couple of poets' convictions are usually "a travesty involving justice," based on PEN American CenterFilmmaker, TV producer and also cartoonist have got additionally received harsh legal treatment, it saysThe poets, Fatemeh Ekhtesari along with Mehdi Musavi, possess additionally each been sentenced to become able to many years within prison with regard to "insulting the sacred" inside their writings, a choice slammed by freedom associated with expression activists.

"Ekhtesari as well as Musavi's arrests as well as convictions really tend to be a travesty of justice, as well as send the chill over your already beleaguered creative community throughout Iran," Karin Deutsch Karlekar, director involving Totally Free Expression programs in PEN American Center, stated in the statement earlier this month.

Their cases highlight the particular contrast between the reasonable image projected abroad by simply Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and additionally the hardline approach in order to human legal rights pursued by simply authorities inside Iran.

Confessions reportedly created under duressMany Americans are usually familiar with Iran's detention associated with Washington Submit reporter Jason Rezaian, who's been stored at your rear of bars pertaining to more than annually on espionage charges. Inside the committee's many latest census, Iran was discovered to become holding no less than 30 journalists in jail, the next highest number worldwide behind China.

. Each poets legally printed textbooks which received approval from your Ministry regarding Islamic Guidance, the particular group said.

The flogging sentences came following Ekhtesari admitted in order to shaking hands along with male participants in a poetry event inside Sweden, PEN said. Shaking hands using a part of the opposite sex whom isn't an immediate relation can be considered an "illegitimate sexual relationship short regarding adultery" in Iran, it said.

A spokesman for that Iranian judiciary declined in order to comment around the poets' cases, which haven't been covered within the country's state media.

'A security state'A filmmaker, Kayvan Karimi, has been lately sentenced to end up being able to six years inside prison as well as 223 lashes upon comparable costs since the poets', according towards the International campaign pertaining to Human Legal Rights in Iran.

PEN also talked about convictions within latest a number of months of the writer and television producer Mostafa Azizi and the cartoonist Atena Farghadani.

"Hardliners aren't just heading right after political activists, they may well be determined for you to stamp out any kind of social or perhaps cultural expression along with which in turn they disagree," stated Hadi Ghaemi, executive director in the International Marketing Campaign pertaining to Human Legal Rights throughout Iran, which can easily be situated in New York.

Rouhani may be the public face of the Iranian government that will agreed a landmark nuclear deal with world powers within July. General Assembly final month, the actual Committee to be able to Protect Journalists in depth Iran's grim record about media freedoms.

"Iran provides ranked on the list of world's worst jailers of the press every year since 2009," the actual group said. but officials along with law enforcement agencies acting with most the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "have worked as one to impose a burglar state by which dissenting views regarding just about any kind are believed national security threats and prosecuted as such," the actual marketing campaign said.

As Rouhani ready to make his address to the U.N. Your newspaper denounced a current court choice to end up being able to convict Rezaian, whom holds dual Iranian as well as American citizenship, as "an outrageous injustice."

But some other Iranian writers that are less well recognized inside the West possess fallen foul involving Iranian authorities, according to legal rights groups.

Earlier this month, Ekhtesari and Musavi, which handled about social problems inside their work, received prison sentences regarding 11 and also 10 years respectively for convictions according to confessions extracted below duress, according to PEN