Award-winning Iranian director Jafar Panahi, imprisoned in Tehran for six months, reported that it had started a hunger strike to protest against their conditions of detentionaccording to a note published by his wife on Thursday.
Panahi, 62 years old and one of the most awarded Iranian filmmakers, was arrested in July, before the wave of protests that have shaken the Iranian regime since September. Despite the fact that he was to be released last month, the filmmaker is still in Evin prison, in the Iranian capital.
“Today, like many people trapped in Iran, I have no choice but to protest this inhumane behavior towards what I hold most dear: my life,” Panahi said.
“I will refuse to eat, drink and take any medication until my release”, added the director, who began his hunger strike on February 1.
“I will continue in this state until, perhaps, my lifeless body is released from jail,” he said.
Pahani is serving a six-year prison sentence, handed down in 2010, for “propaganda against the system”.
The filmmaker, one of the most internationally celebrated in his country, won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 for “El círculo”, and the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2015 for “Taxi Tehran”.
Numerous film and cultural personalities are among the thousands of people arrested in Iran, as part of the repression of the protests unleashed after the death in detention of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, in mid-September. (YO)
Source: Eluniverso
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