Shabtabnews In this dark night, I have lost my way – Arise from a corner, oh you the star of guidance.
Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) – Human rights defender, Sepideh Gholiyan was arrested by over 30 security forces during a night raid at her home in Ahvaz. She was furloughed from prison on August 19.
Human rights defender Sepideh Gholiyan’s relatives reported that she was arrested during a night raid at her home on October 12. Her brother and mother said that the manner she was abducted in raised concerns on her whereabouts and whether they would “kill her until the morning?”
Her brother Mehdi Gholiyan posted on Instagram: “Minutes ago, more than 30 male and female security forces raided Sepideh Gholiyan’s house, abducted and transferred her to an unknown location. All the mobile phones were confiscated.”
Mr Gholiyan also warned that “the responsibility for my sister, Sepideh Gholiyan’s life, who was arrested by security forces an hour ago, lies with the Prison Organisation.”
Sepideh was summoned to Branch Two of the Bushehr Public and Revolutionary Court on September 20. She is facing charges of “spreading online lies and propaganda activities against the system.”
She released a short documentary titled “Peng” last month in which she talked about some of the women she had met in prison and exposed abuse and torture by prison officials and social workers in Bushehr Prison.
In a Twitter thread on September 9, she called Bushehr Prison “a place near the end of the earth” where women prisoners are forced to provide sexual services, didn’t have the right to wear underwear, even when menstruating and even the children of prisoners are abused. She wrote: “In the dungeons of Bushehr, any defiance and disobedience against the cruel and inhuman orders by prison administrators is tantamount to being more and more crumpled in this filth that has no voice and no face.”
