- Target:
- Ahmed Shaheed, UN, UNHCHR, State Department, EU, Navi Pillay, Ban Ki-Moon, European Parliament
- Region:
- GLOBAL
- Website:
- radiozamaneh.com
Maryam Bidgoli, an Iranian women's rights activist and a member of the One Million Signatures Campaign to End Discriminatory Laws, has been arrested in Qom to serve out a prison term she has challenged as illegal.
Human Rights Reporters Committee reports that Bidgoli was picked up Thursday morning July 21, 2011 at her home and transferred to Langarood Prison in Qom.
Bidgoli was previously arrested together with Fatemeh Masjedi, another women's rights activist, in May 2009. She was released on bail after two weeks.
The two women were sentenced to six months in prison and $2,000 in fines for the charge of "propaganda against the Islamic Republic” because they supported the work of a feminist group by collecting and publishing signatures to change discriminatory laws against women.
Bidgoli challenged the sentence, saying the aim of the One Million Signatures Campaign is to present its collected signatures as a petition to the legal system. She added that no judicial body has declared the One Million Signatures Campaign to be illegal.
The court has rejected Bidgoli's challenge and demanded that she serve out her sentence.
We the undersigned demand that the international community bring all possible pressure to bear upon the Islamic Republic of Iran to immediately free Maryam Bidgoli and to unconditionally repeal the illegal prison sentence imposed upon her.
Ms. Bidgoli is a prisoner of conscience who is being persecuted solely for her peaceful work as a women's rights activist and a member of the One Million Signatures Campaign. Thus, the charges against her are themselves illegal under both international human rights covenants to which Iran is a signatory state as well as the Iranian Constitution.
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The Free Iranian Women's Rights Activist Maryam Bidgoli petition to Ahmed Shaheed, UN, UNHCHR, State Department, EU, Navi Pillay, Ban Ki-Moon, European Parliament was written by John S. Burke and is in the category Human Rights at GoPetition.