Prominent Figures and Organisations Urge Life-Saving Medical Care for Iran’s Longest-Held Female Political Prisoner
Today, 22 human rights organisations and 13 individuals, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi, have called, in an open letter, on Iran to provide life-saving medical treatment to Zeinab Jalalian, the country’s longest-serving female political prisoner.
Zeinab Jalalian, a Kurdish women’s rights activist, has spent 17 years — most of her adult life — in prison. One of her last activities prior to her arrest in 2008, aged only 27, was a visit to a girls’ high school to discuss the importance of International Women’s Day, where she distributed flowers to the students.
Following her arrest, she was tortured, including by being beaten while blindfolded, flogged under her feet, threatened with rape, and held in prolonged solitary confinement by authorities. In 2008, she was handed a death sentence, later commuted to life imprisonment, after a deeply flawed trial.
She is currently held in Yazd Central Prison, where at least eight prisoners — including one woman — were reportedly executed in the past two months.
Despite suffering from several potentially life-threatening illnesses, Iranian authorities have consistently denied Zeinab access to the medical care she urgently needs for proper diagnosis and treatment. Rather than provide appropriate care, Iranian authorities have allegedly intimidated her, pressuring her to sign a letter of repentance in exchange for treatment or release. Zeinab has refused to give in to such tactics.
Signatories of the letter include the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi; the former British-Iranian hostage Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband, activist Richard Ratcliffe; activist Elika Ashoori, daughter of former British-Iranian hostage Anoosheh Ashoori; comedian Shaparak Khorsandi; award-winning journalist Ramita Navai and actress and activist Nazanin Boniadi.
The release of the open letter coincides with the third anniversary of the death of Zhina Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old who died in police custody in 2022 after being arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s mandatory hijab laws, sparking nationwide protests.
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