Margaret Atwood and Khaled Hosseini demand launch of ‘abused’ poet in infamous Iranian jail | EUROtoday

Margaret Atwood and Khaled Hosseini are amongst 100 writers to induce the Iranian authorities to right away launch poet Ali Asadollahi from the infamous Evin jail.

In a public letter signed by authors, poets, journalists and students, the letter calls for the discharge of Mr Asadollahi alongside all different writers who’re detained in Iran.

The writers state that Mr Asadollahi, who was arrested final month, is being routinely interrogated, abused, pressured to make a compelled confession, and denied entry to a lawyer whereas in detention.

The letter accuses Iran of being the second-worst jailer of writers on this planet.

“We join together to strongly condemn Ali Asadollahi’s arrest and stand in solidarity with him and with other writers, alongside all of the courageous Iranians who have been arrested or killed for expressing dissent,” wrote the letter, signed by Ms Atwood, writer of The Handmaid’s Taleand Mr Hosseini, writer of The Kite Runner.

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Karin Deutsch Karlekar, PEN America’s director of writers in danger, added: “The brutal arrest and subsequent treatment of Ali has become the rule, not the exception, when it comes to how Iran treats its writers in its escalating crackdown on free expression and dissent.

“As Ali Asadollahi marks one month behind bars, his detention is an urgent issue that must not be forgotten among all the other shocking news coming out of Iran.”

Mr Asadollahi was arrested in the course of the night time on 24 January by brokers for Tehran’s Ministry of Intelligence, weeks after mass protests in opposition to the Iranian regime ended with a brutal and lethal crackdown by safety forces.

The author, who was beforehand arrested in November 2022 through the Mahsa Amini rebellion, was swept up in a wave of arrests throughout and after the protests, which have been triggered by financial hardship however spiralled into protests demanding wholesale political change.

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A member of the Iranian Writers’ Association, Mr Asadollahi has printed six poetry collections, and was lately awarded the Gabo Prize for literary translation. In the letter, he’s described by his fellow writers as a “leading writer of his generation”.

Arrests akin to Mr Asadollahi’s have been taking place for weeks following the federal government crackdown.

Reports of raids on properties and workplaces have come from main cities and rural cities, with college college students, docs, legal professionals, academics, actors, enterprise house owners, athletes and filmmakers all being swept up, in addition to reformist figures near President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The letter notes that a number of different writers have additionally been detained in Iran in current weeks. IWA board member Yousef Ansari and one other particular person have been arrested after studying poetry at a memorial for Baktash Abtin, a poet and filmmaker who died in custody 4 years in the past after delays in receiving medical remedy in jail.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has put the variety of arrests at greater than 50,000.