Human Rights
Rights groups call for 'urgent' Iran Nobel laureate medical release
While the Iranian regime rushed to care for wounded IRGC and Hizbullah elements in Lebanon, it has denied a human rights defender care in prison.
![Iranian journalist Taghi Rahmani shows a picture of his wife, Iranian rights campaigner and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, during an interview in his apartment in Paris on December 5, 2023. [Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP]](/gc3/images/2024/12/02/48335-narges-mohammedi-photo-370_237.webp)
By Pishtaz |
More than 40 free expression and human rights organizations are calling on the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council to intervene for the urgent medical release of Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi.
The human rights defender, journalist, author and former deputy director of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre in Iran, has spent more than 10 years in prison. Her current period of detention started in November 2021.
In a November 18 letter to the UN Human Rights Council, rights groups urged it to call on the Iranian authorities to grant Mohammadi a medical furlough on humanitarian grounds.
This would enable her to receive comprehensive and essential care for a range of serious medical conditions, it said.
"Mohammadi’s health has deteriorated drastically during her long incarceration, most notably in 2022, when she suffered multiple heart attacks before ultimately being transferred to hospital for emergency heart surgery," the letter said.
More recently, a critical medical procedure was delayed for months, and a hospital stay for a serious condition was curtailed.
"Years of imprisonment and months of solitary confinement have severely compromised Mohammadi’s health, leaving her with multiple serious conditions that cannot be addressed through a short, incomplete hospital visit," it said.
The withholding of essential urgent medical treatment "displays a callous disregard for her health and wellbeing under detention," the letter said.
"Worryingly, her case is not unique, but is part of a systematic pattern of arbitrary medical neglect of prisoners, including human rights defenders, journalists, and writers," it added.
Clear double standards
The Iranian regime's "callous disregard" for the health of a female human rights activist comes in sharp contrast to its response following the pager attacks of September 17 and 18 that targeted IRGC and Hizbullah operatives in Lebanon.
Following the incident, the regime sent eight eye specialists and a team of nurses to Beirut, Iran’s health minister Mohammadreza Zafarghandi told the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.
A further 95 people were flown to Tehran for treatment, per Iran’s Red Crescent.
Iranian media outlets showed videos and photos of an aircraft transporting the wounded, many of them suffering eye injuries, Bloomberg reported.
In one image, President Masoud Pezeshkian -- who has reaffirmed his commitment to support Hizbullah -- is seen at the bedside of one of those being treated at the Farabi Eye Hospital in Tehran, it said.
As long as the stupidity caused by religion and the ignorance caused by filtering, studying, and prejudice, for us, in the wealthy Iran of 40 years, it seems as if we are exposed to the greatest plunder and oppression: Iran, the great prison.
There is no more than one sentence: the mullahs must leave Iran for Palestine and become martyrs for their own cause. That's it.
I really want to know how much you counted on the stupidity of your readers to feed the nation all the lies and exaggerations you could find. Narges Mohammadi is an illiterate, traitorous scoundrel.
You are the shrew.
They should give him leave to address his problem.
Just as the West deals harshly with its opponents, Iran must also deal harshly with opponents of the law, with the difference that Westerners treat even pregnant women with brutality, but Iran does not, and treats them with Islamic dignity. Therefore, a person is obligated to abide by the laws of that country in whatever country he lives in.
This guy has broken the curb and that is the reason for the big mouth. In which country and which system does anyone dare to do the things they do in Iran?
Excellent, it was good.
They let him go, see how he respects the law?
What is freedom? We have never seen it here.
Very interesting that Nobel prize is awarded for the sabotage in countries that are like a thorn in Europe’s eyes...Nominate one of these good humanists and let's respectfully hang a golden bathroom ewer off their neck, so that their character can be elevated to the highest level.
You are just like Yazid.
No ruler likes their critics in any form, an example of which is South Korea.