Political prisoner Arzhang Davoudi has staged a hunger strike, protesting the cruel and inhuman conditions he has been forced to endure in solitary confinement.
This is not the first time that the prisoner has gone on a hunger strike to highlight poor prison condition.
He went on hunger strike in the quarantine section of Zahedan prison in February 2018. Davoudi had described the reason for his hunger strike as such: “I am on hunger because I have been deprived of free air and sunlight since August.”
In March 2018, Arzhang Davoudi had stressed in a message he had sent from Zahedan prison:
Hunger strike for a bit of air and sunlight
34 days pass from my hunger strike. I merely want some air and some sunlight, of which I’ve been inhumanly deprived since August. This shameless and lengthy suppression of my rights has worsened my heart condition and diabetes. It has caused my eyesight to become dim. In February, when I was returned to Zahedan prison, my physical conditions further deteriorated, because I’m being held in a very small cell, known as ‘solitary no.2’ of the prison’s quarantine section.
I’m deprived of visits, phone calls, communications with other prisoners, free airtime, walks, reading books, TV, medication, suitable food…
Fellow compatriots,
Certainly, the vicious practices of the regime’s authorities vis-à-vis prisoners, especially those exiled from their hometowns, is far from the customs of the brave people of Sistan & Baluchistan Province [in southeast Iran]… [Iranian regime Supreme Leader] Ali Khamenei… knows very well that only officials of this religious theocracy ruling our country carry out such vicious practices. Therefore, the very harsh measures seen in the prisons of this province is not only imposed against political prisoners. This nature is literally seen in all forms of this regime’s authorities who always resort to force.
“Therefore, I am expecting Mr. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hossein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and other human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, to dispatch observers to inspects these medieval era prisons.
The Iranian regime transferred Arzhang Davoudi to Zahedan prison in January 2018.
Since then, the authorities have kept him in the prison’s quarantine under constant, severe torture.
In early 2018, he was summoned to the office of the prison’s chief while his hands and feet were enchained.
When he left the room, the deputy chief of the president shoved him and threw him off the stairs of the second floor.
Having chains on his feet and hands, the 65-year-old prisoner wasn not able to maintain his balance and fell hard.
As a result, he broke his right thigh bone, his left tibia. He also dislocated a shoulder and suffered from bruises to his spinal cord.
Medical diagnoses have shown that he will not be able to walk for the rest of his life. Presently he can barely walk with a walker.
Davoudi is bearing all this pain while he is being held in a dark and dirty room in the prison’s quarantine section.
The room he is incarcerated in has never seen the light of day since it was created and has never even been disinfected.
Davoudi, who suffers from heart conditions has also caught skin diseases due to the conditions of this cell.
Arzhang
Davoudi is a teacher and an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime.
He has spent several years in the Iranian regime’s prisons because of his activism against the regime’s crimes and corruption.
Davoudi had previously described the brutal conditions of his incarceration in an open letter and had called on international human rights authorities to inspect Iran’s prisons.
