She is the prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who is credited with saving her life through the activist Shaparak Shajarizadeh. Arrested in February 2018 for participating in White Wednesday’s civil disobedience motion against Iran’s mandatory veil law, Shajarizadeh was placed in solitary confinement while the Iranian passing government denied her access to her lawyer. Released, briefly detained the following month, and in May, while on vacation with her son, she declared heus on hunger strike, first rejecting the water. “Nasrin became a criminal and told me that if you wanted to go on the hunger strike, you’re fine, but drink water,” Shajarizadeh told TIME from Toronto, where he’s lived in exile since September 2018.
A veteran of Iran’s 40-year struggle for women’s rights, Sotoudeh presented more than solace. His defense drew foreign attention to cases of activists arrested for protesting against Iran’s mandatory hijab law. It was through Sotoudeh’s paintings as a lawyer that Shajarizadeh released on bail in May 2018. By the time an Iranian court handed down a 20-year suspended criminal sentence, Shajarizadeh had already left the country with his young son. “Nasrin a pillar for us women at the time,” Shajarizadeh says. “She talked to the media about our instances; made sure that the global observation.
Two years later, Sotoudeh is the one who is endangering his life on hunger strike, while Shajarizadeh tries to make sure the whole world pays attention. Sotoudeh was arrested in June 2018 for ambiguous fees similar to her paintings as a lawyer, shortly after protecting Shajarizadeh and other activists. Since then, she has been held in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison, joining other activists and intellectuals bars.
This is the moment in less than six months when Sotoudeh has launched a hunger strike calling for the release of Iranian political detainees by the global pandemic. Once he returned he “risked his life for imprisoned journalists, women’s rights advocates, minors, lawyers, devout minorities and environmentalists,” said former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, president of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights (RWCHR) and a member of the legal team representing Sotoudeh internationally, “His courage and commitment are unwavering.”
Iran is recently grappling with an increase in COVID-19 cases, and although Iranian officials said the country had released some 100,000 prisoners this year, the maximum number of political prisoners is still behind bars. (The virus can be transmitted smoothly in prisons, and the UN has suggested to governments around the world to release political prisoners from the pandemic.) For months, Sotoudeh called on Iran to release the opinion of its fellow citizens. “Politicians [activists] have been accused of incredible acts: espionage, corruption on the ground, attack on national security, prostitution, education of illegal channels in [the messaging app] Telegram, which can keep them behind bars for up to 10 years or even lead to execution,” Sotoudeh wrote in a letter dated August 11, notified through TIME. “From the beginning of the court proceedings to the sentencing, many suspects are denied independent legal representation or cannot consult their lawyers freely.” She writes that since “all correspondence remains unanswered,” she made the decision to start a hunger strike on Tuesday.
Evin Prison in Tehran has been Iran’s top criminal for holding criminals since 1972. A few months after the start of Sotoudeh’s initial five-year sentence in that country, the government sentenced her in absentia to seven additional charges, adding “propaganda opposed to the state,” appearing before the courts without an Islamic hijab”and “encouraging prostitution.” This raised his total sentence to 38 years and added 148 lashes to his sentence. The highest of additional fees was a 12-year sentence for “promoting immorality and indecency,” Sotoudeh wrote in an opinion piece for TIME on International Women’s Day: Iran’s legal formula requires her to comply before eligible for parole. Amnesty International has called both trials in which Sotoudeh was convicted as “manifestly unfair.”
His first hunger strike, which began on 16 March, began days after the Iranian government announced that he had temporarily released 85,000 prisoners. Last April, Iran said it had released 100,000 prisoners as part of what a spokesman for the country’s judiciary called “a vital step” to protect the suitability of prisoners. But political prisoners were more often left out of mass leave, and many people remained in crowded and unsanitary neighborhoods where social estrangement was impossible.
As of August 14, Iran had recorded more than 19,000 deaths as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which is already the highest number in the Middle East. But according to a BBC poll published on 3 August, the death toll may simply be three times as many. And while Iranian officials have described their efforts to protect pandemic criminals as “exemplary,” the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights remains involved in the imprisonment of conscience criminals in Iran, adding that those believed to be affected by COVID-19. 19 symptoms. Leaked letters downloaded through Amnesty International in July show that the Iranian government ignored repeated calls from senior Iranian officials guilty of handling the country’s criminals to unload resources for the spread of COVID-19 and treat inflamed criminals. There are symptoms that the virus is spreading in Evin: of 17 inmates, the criminal government has recently been tested in a singles neighborhood, 12 have tested positive for the virus, the Center for Human Rights in Iran reported on 11 August.
Sotoudeh’s initial six-day hunger strike was “very effective,” according to the Canadian legal team representing it internationally. “The Iranian government has released prisoners in its neighborhood, some of whom in particular have called for their release, some with physical fitness problems or a weakened immune system,” says Yonah Diamond, legal adviser at the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights. (TIME may simply not independently verify a link between the Sotoudeh hunger strike and the release of urgent prisoners.)
However, Sotoudeh’s friends and family circle are involved about his health. Her husband, Reza Khandan, told TIME in a statement that for relatives of detained activists, “the hardest days are when a member of the family circle is on hunger strike.” Khandan also highlighted the fatal dangers of falling food, noting that Iran has had “bad reports of hunger movements among political prisoners in recent years.” In December 2018, activist Vahid Sayadi Nasiri, who was being held in Qom prison, died on his mobile phone after a 60-day hunger strike.
Shajarizadeh, the women’s rights activist in exile, may sense the physical and intellectual misery Sotoudeh is experiencing lately. Although he says the symptoms vary from user to user, he deeply recalls the agony of his own hunger attacks. The prospect of Sotoudeh edding one when his immune formula might want to fight a fatal virus full of fear of Shajarizadeh, he says, but senses why it is necessary. “Sometimes the only thing you have to fight with is with your life.”
Sotoudeh is one of Iranian women’s rights activists featured in “40 Million,” a short documentary by director Jeff Kaufman for TIME. It can be seen on the most sensitive part of this page.