Iran International
Ashkan Khatibi, a popular TV and cinema actor in Iran who was detained three months ago for expressing solidarity with protesters, has spoken up about his ordeal.
In a post Saturday, Khatibi, 43, said that in the past three months he has been living in hiding and fear. “I was arrested and questioned for allegations made against me 90 days ago, charged and my case was handed over to a judge,” he wrote in Persian in his post which also included a message in English.
Khatibi said his “endless” interrogations came with verbal and physical violence and that after being freed he was assaulted in the street by plainclothes security forces who accused him of blasphemy. The actor said he received so many death threats by phone that he had to change his cellphone number. “I had to leave behind my career, my life, and everything that I had worked hard for all my life.”
The actor has had a stroke during this time and is suffering from panic attacks resulting from the violence he was subjected to, but he says he’s not telling his story to make people feel sorry for him.
”I know and you know that this [revolution] will not stop and that the blood [that is being shed] will not be in vain,” he said while making a plea, presumably to people outside Iran, to be the voice of Iranian protesters and their“unique revolution”.
Over 312,000 “liked” Khatibi’s Instagram post within a day, his first since the very early day of the protests that swept across the country in late September. He has also reposted some of his Instagram stories which have been used as evidence against him. “I will talk about the details of what has happened when the time is right,” he said.
Khatibi is one of scores of celebrities who have been detained for sympathizing with protesters or criticism of the government. Around fifty filmmakers and actors of Iranian cinema are currently in detention.
Only a week ago, Taraneh Alidoosti, one of Iran's most famous actors, was arrested at her home by security forces for defiantly posting a photo of herself without the compulsory veil and criticizing the death penalty. Over a million of her followers liked her post.
Alidoosti who introduced herself as “actor, translator, feminist, mom” in her social media bio, was holding a poster that read “Women, Life, Freedom”, the signature slogan of the protests or “revolution” as many prefer to say.
“Now sit and watch for the consequences of [your] blood-thirstiness,” she told regime authorities in protest to the execution of Mohsen Shekari, 23, who was hanged on December 8 in Tehran after a bogus trial.
“His name was Mohsen Shekari. Any international organization that witnesses this bloodshed but takes no action is a shame to humanity,” Alidoosti wrote.
A few days after Shekari’s execution, another young man, Majidreza Rahnavard, was hanged from a construction crane on a street in Mashhad while a hand-picked group of government officials and plainclothes security forces watched.
Instagram has deactivated Alidoosti’s account to prevent the authorities from accessing her private messages as it is a well-known fact that one of the first things that authorities do after arresting someone is demanding their email and social media account passwords to dig for information to use against the detainee and others.
In a statement Saturday, the Association of Qom Seminary Teachers urged the authorities to continue executions but use the amputation punishment to deter people from joining the protests instead of lenient punishments in the law such as exile.
The association (Jame’e Moddaresin-e Howzeh Elmiye-ye Qom) suggested that anyone who “instigates fear in society” -- supposedly by participation in anti-government protests -- is belligerent (mohareb) which in Iran's Sharia-based laws is punishable by death, crucifixion, severance of limbs, and/or exile.
Ayatollah Abbas Ka’abi, a member of the clerical group, said last week that despite normal practice in the case of murders where victims’ families can practice the “right to blood” – that is demand retribution in kind (death sentence), ‘blood money’, or forgive -- the “imam” of the society should punish a belligerent protester even if the family forgives the killer.
Another member, Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, said Friday that those who participate in the protests, whether this includes direct involvement in the killing of government forces or not, should be considered as belligerents and be found guilty of “corruption on earth.”
The clerics, who are loyal followers of Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei and are regime insiders benefitting from power and perks, simply twisted a 1,400-year-old vague concept of a crime to fit the regime’s agenda against dissent.
“The severing of fingers of one hand and toes of the opposite foot could be effective [as a deterrent punishment]” if a person “instigates fear in society, without the involvement of the [opposition] media and without urging others to follow suit,” the clerics of the powerful association suggested while arguing that the ‘exile’ option is too lenient to “prevent crime”.
Several Shiite religious scholars this month voiced their opposition to this interpretation of Islamic law, but the harsh approach is what the regime prefers.
They also stated that even if no killing is involved, a protester’s “crime” should be punished by death if they commit it with the “goal of causing fear and a sense of insecurity in the society and knowing that these actions would be publicized domestically and abroad.” Exile would be totally ineffective in such cases, they declared, because such actions tarnish Iran's image in the international community and bear other costs for the government.
The reference to the media and publicizing acts of protest is a reminder of the regime’s extreme sensitivity to media coverage of its repressive acts, particularly by television channels abroad that broadcast in Persian.
The Islamic Republic on December 8 hanged 23-year-old Mohsen Shekari after a secret Revolutionary Court trial. Four days later Majidreza Rahnavard, also 23, was hanged on a street in Mashhad in front of a hand-picked group of insiders to call it a “public hanging”. At least forty protesters are in risk of execution or death penalty sentences by courts in nearly all of which their rights, such as the right to due process, are grossly violated.
Besides intellectuals, politicians and activists in Iran, some high-ranking clerics and former officials such as the prominent scholar Ayatollah Mostafa Mohaqeq-Damad have also condemned protester executions or urged leniency.
A top Sunni cleric, Mowlavi Abdolhamid Esmail-Zehi, who leads the Sunni Friday congregation of Zahedan in the capital of the restive province of Sista-Baluchestan, argued this Friday that the death sentences passed on protesters were not religiously justifiable and warned about the consequences of such harsh punishments. “No ruler has such authority,” he said defiantly.
The international community including various rights organizations and activists, western officials, and politicians have also condemned the recent executions and urged the government to put an end to death sentences. In the past two weeks many European parliamentarians have also offered political sponsorship to detained protesters who are in imminent danger of execution or being sentenced to death.