- Name: Mojgan Kavousi
- Position: Writer, documentary filmmaker and activist
- Deprived of liberty from: September 22, 2022
- Judgment: 5 years of imprisonment
- Country: Iran
- Place of confinement: Tonekabon Prison
- Health condition: Severe health conditions
- Torture complaint: Subject to torture and inhumane prison conditions
Mozhgan Kavousi is a writer and documentary filmmaker from Kalardahst. She has campaigned for the preservation of the Kurdish language. “Hiwa” is one of the documentaries made by her.
The Kurdish writer was arrested at her hometown Nowshahr on 22 September and after an initial interrogation taken to pre-trial detention at Tonekabon Prison. She was affiliated to the resistance to compulsory hijab movement, in the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
Kavousi’s trail in the Iranian Branch One of the Islamic Revolution Court began on 20 December. She was tried over a series of charges, including, “spreading corruption on earth” (efsad-e fel arz), “insulting the Supreme Leader”, and “spreading lies”, among other charges.
The court informed Kavousi’s lawyers on 29 December that she had been sentenced to five years and two months in jail.
However, this was not the writer’s first arrest. Kavousi was previously arrested in 2019, serving 3 years in prison for her ethnic rights activism.
During her arrest, Kavousi twice underwent a hunger strike to protest prison conditions.
In both detentions she was psychologically tortured, and faced inhumane prison conditions, along with due process violations.
Sponsors
Name : Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo
Position: Freedom and human rights activist
Obsevations
Rosa María Payá Acevedo is a Cuban activist for freedom and human rights. The daughter of activist Oswaldo Payá, head of the Christian Liberation Movement, she took up much of his activist work.
Since her father’s death in 2012, her mother and her have been living in the Miami area, but frequently travels back to Cuba to visit.
She is president of the Latin American Youth Network for Democracy and a member of the Cuba Decide campaign. In April 2014, Payá was arrested in Panama, before the Summit of the Americas, in an act that has been criticized as political intimidation.
