Change for
Equality: November 18, 2007: Maryam
Hossienkhah, Journalist, member of the Women's Cultural Center, and an active
member of the One Million Signatures Campaign was arrested earlier today. A few
days after the site of the Women's Cultural Center, a leading women's NGO, was
shut down on order of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and the
Judiciary, Maryam Hosseinkhah, an editor of the site of this organization as
well as one of the editors of the site of the One Million Signatures Campaign,
Change for Equality, was summoned to the security branch of the Revolutionary
Courts on Saturday 17th of November. She was interrogated for over 2 hours on
Saturday and was told that she is charged with disruption of public opinion,
propaganda against the state, and publication of lies through the publication of
untrue news items on the site of the Women's Cultural Center and the One Million
Signatures Campaign. Maryam Hosseinkhah was also ordered to return to the
Revolutionary Courts for more interrogation today, Sunday November 18, 2007 at
9:00am. After arriving at Court today, an order of arrest of issued for Ms.
Hosseinkhah, and to our disbelief she was arrested and transferred to Evin
Prison at 2:00pm.
The arrest of Maryam Hosseinkhah marks the
continuation of increased harassment of women's rights activists, especially
members of the Campaign, by the Security forces. To date, over 40 individuals
have been arrested in relation to their peaceful activities in support of the
Campaign. Currently two other members of the Campaign besides Maryam remain in
prison. Ronak Safarzadeh and Hana Abdi were both arrested in Kurdistan after
collection of signatures. They remain in prison and have had not had access to
their families or lawyers.
