December 20, 2022
Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi has demanded the release of actress Taraneh Alidoosti, who was arrested in Iran.
In an Instagram post, Farhadi wrote: “I have worked with Taraneh on four films and now she is in prison for her rightful support of her fellow countrymen and her opposition to the unjust sentences being issued. If showing such support is a crime, then tens of millions of people of this land are criminals.”
Taraneh was reportedly detained after expressing solidarity with anti-government protestors in a social media post on charges of “spreading falsehoods” relating to the protest movement. Before her social media was switched off, she had condemned people who had not spoken out against the execution of human rights activist Mohsen Shekari.
Farhadi directed Alidoosti in The Salesman, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2017, and has worked with her on several other films.
Alidoosti was at the Cannes Film Festival this year with Competition Title Leila’s Brothers, and appeared in the film Orca.
Farhadi also called for the release of other prominent Iranian creatives caught up in the current cultural war with the government. “I stand with Taraneh and demand her release alongside that of my other fellow cineastes Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof and all the other less-known prisoners whose only crime is the attempt for a better life,” he wrote.
Panahi and Rasoulof are among several others in the creative sectors who have been detained recently. The list also includes filmmaker Mostafa Al-Ahmad, singer Singer Shervin Hajipour and Kurdish Tehran-based rapper Saman Yasin.
Alidoosti recently posted an Instagram photo without a headscarf, a garment required in the Islamic Republic. It was done in solidarity with widespread anti-government protests sparked by the death in police custody of a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, for not wearing a headscarf in public.
Well-known political activist detained during protests in Iran released on bail
December 20, 2022
Political activist Majid Tavakoli, also a student leader in the 2009 protests in Iran, has been released on bail after being incarcerated for nearly three months in Tehran's Evin Prison after being arrested during riots over the death of young Mahsa Amini.
"We are happy about this news, but our happiness will be complete when all our loved ones who are in prison are released," his brother Mohsen Tavakoli, who posted a photo of the Iranian activist with a bouquet of flowers on his Twitter account, assured early this morning.
Tavakoli is a prominent student leader who was already arrested in 2009 after attending a university rally as part of the anti-government protests that followed the disputed presidential elections in June of the same year.
The activist was sentenced in 2010 to eight and a half years in prison on several charges, including spreading propaganda against the Iranian state. He was considered a "prisoner of conscience" for being imprisoned for his political views, according to Amnesty International.
Although he was released in 2015, the authorities imposed against him a five-year disqualification from political activity and banned him from leaving the country. Tavakoli was arrested on September 23 during the protests over Amini's death along with two journalists, since when he has been held in solitary confinement.
The death of the young Amini, arrested for improperly wearing the veil and died in police custody, has led to a series of protests nationwide and harshly repressed by the authorities. These episodes have led to sanctions by Western nations.
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