We received the following update from the International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners NOW!
Campaign Update July 10, 2021

Mariam Claren: Funds needed by July 16 – every penny counts

$6,500 Raised—$8,500 To Go by July 16

July 12, 2021 | revcom.us

 

FLASH: Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Shahrzad Mojab, Mansoureh Behkish sign Emergency Appeal

Letter from Mariam Claren, daughter of German-Iranian political prisoner Nahid Taghavi: “We need to raise these funds by July 16 and every penny helps.”

July 10,
Hello to all supporters,

The fight for the release of political prisoners - especially my mother Nahid Taghavi - has become my life's work. I started the campaign #FreeNahid and work with many NGOs, human rights groups, and other campaigns and movements in support of Iran’s political prisoners.

Together with the U.S.-based International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners, we issued an Emergency Appeal - The Lives of Iran’s Political Prisoners Hang in the Balance—We Must ACT Now—and have collected over 2,000 signatures including from many prominent people.

We want to publish this Emergency Appeal and its most significant signers in the August issue of the New York Review of Books, which reaches tens of thousands of caring, thinking people, including intellectuals, writers and artists. This and online promotion costs $15,000 and would represent a breakthrough in rallying support for Iran’s political prisoners in the U.S.

We need to raise these funds by July 16 and every penny helps. I would be very grateful if you support us at: www.freeiranspoliticalprisonersnow.org/donate.

Please do it for all of those who are behind bars because they wanted to help others, so that they may all be free. I thank you with all my heart.

Mariam - forever #FreeNahid

Mariam Claren’s mother Nahid Taghavi is a 66-year-old German-Iranian dual citizen and women’s rights activist who was arbitrarily arrested on October 16, 2020. She was taken to Tehran’s Evin Prison, where she spent 194 days in solitary confinement and was interrogated 80 times for a total of 1,000 hours, all without legal counsel. She’s still awaiting sentencing along with several others, including British-Iranian dual citizen and labor activist Mehran Raoof. They last appeared in court on June 13. Their health and safety have not been verified since.

Campaign updates:

• Over 50 people from four countries have donated a total of $6,500. We have six more days to raise the remaining $8,500 so we can print the powerful presentation of the Emergency Appeal in the New York Review of Books.
• New signers: Noam Chomsky; Daniel Ellsberg; Columbia University Professor and Citizen Ambassador, Free Rohingya Coalition Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; Professor Shahrzad Mojab of the University of Toronto; and courageous Iranian resister Mansoureh Behkish (see below) have now endorsed the Emergency Appeal.
• Breaking news: Journalist and human rights defender Narges Mohammadi was recently released from prison. In an online video, she thanks activists for her freedom and urges everyone to continue this important struggle.
• Farsi online magazine in Dallas, Texas, Shahrvand, publishes entire Emergency Appeal and asks people to donate for its publication.

Mansoureh Behkish is a courageous resister and signer of the Emergency Appeal. Six of her close relatives—four brothers, a sister, and a brother-in-law—were executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) during the 1980s. She continued to resist and faced continuous threats from the IRI, including up to eleven and a half years in prison. She is now an activist with the Mothers of Khavaran and a founder of the Mothers of Laleh Park. These groups are made up of family members fighting for justice for their family members who have been murdered or disappeared by the IRI. Their fight includes holding memorials at the unmarked mass graves where the bodies of their loved ones may have been dumped, such as Khavaran cemetery in southern Tehran, even though the IRI forbids families of the dead to mourn in the cemetery. Many of those buried at Khavaran were executed during the Islamic Republic’s 1988 massacre of 4,000-5,000 political prisoners. Their identities are unknown, even to their relatives. Iran’s newly elected president Ebrahim Raisi was on the death commission directly responsible for that atrocity.