An Iranian Labor activist arrested during a Labor Day protest on May 1, 2019 was beaten twice in one day by prison guards in the notorious Qarchak Prison near Tehran.
According to a tweet posted by the husband of Neda Naji, she was beaten once by a prisoner and once by prison guards in the span of 24 hours.
“Neda Naji was beaten twice in the past 24 hours in the Qarchak Prison in Varamin, once by a non-political prisoner and once by prison personnel,” her husband, Jamal Ameli wrote in his tweet.
“She was taken to the prison medical clinic afterwards and due to the strike to her head by prison agents, she had blurry vision for a few hours,” he tweeted adding that his wife’s life was in danger.
Neda Naji was among 35 people violently arrested at a Labor Day rally in front of regime’s parliament that was organized by 20 independent local labor rights organizations.
Mrs Naji was transferred from Evin Prison’s Section 209, run by the Ministry of Intelligence, to Qarchak Prison in Varamin on June 15, 2019.
She said that the lives of her and Atefeh Rangriz, another female labor activist arrested during the Labor Day demonstration, are in danger and nobody hears their voices.
In a video published on social media, Mrs Naji’s mother said that her daughter was charged with “acting against national security” adding that officials had not given her any information about her daughter’s case in the first 22 days of her arrest.
Over the past year, Iran has arrested several labor activists. Amir Aligholi, Sanaz Allahyari, and Amir Hossein Mohammadifar, members of the editorial board of the online publication Gam, have also been detained since January. Several members of Iran’s teachers’ union, including Ismael Abdi, Mohammad Habibi, and Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi, who were arrested in the past two years, remain in prison for their peaceful activism.
