«Are we happy? We are devastated…” A few days ago, Tahereh Saeedi, the wife of the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi still imprisoned in Tehran, published a desperate open letter which brutally contradicted the optimistic dispatches announcing a possible release of the author of the Circle and recent No bears. The latter, himself losing all hope of getting out when he is a victim of the total arbitrariness of the regime which has decided to silence his dissenting voice and he is imprisoned for a sentence which a judge had nevertheless decreed obsolete since pronounced more than ten years ago and therefore invalid according to Iranian law, has just started a hunger strike. In a statement he sent to his lawyers, the filmmaker wrote:I firmly declare that as a sign of protest against the illegal and inhuman behavior of the judicial and security apparatus and their hostage taking, I have been on a hunger strike since the morning of 12 Bahman (February 1). I will refuse to eat and drink any food and medicine until the time of my release. I will remain in this state until perhaps my lifeless body is freed from prison.»
Jafar Panahi has been in prison since July 2022, he had gone to the court of justice in Evin prison to inquire about the fate of his fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, who had just been arrested for having participated in a petition asking the police not to fire on demonstrators during the militant actions which were already multiplying in the country before the general revolt triggered by the murder of the young Mahsa Amini.
Caution and fatalism
Jafar Panahi associates his arrest “to banditry and hostage-taking” : «It is obvious that the harassment carried out by a security institution and the capitulation without appeal of the judicial authorities to its decisions are once again facilitated by arbitrary laws. This is just an excuse for repression. […] Today, like many people trapped in Iran, I have no choice but to protest against these inhumane behaviors with what I hold most dear, which is my life.At the beginning of January, we learned from the voice of his lawyer that the filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof had been released for only two weeks, for health reasons: “These days in hospital are not counted in his prison term, so he will have to stay in prison for another two weeks.“, she had specified.
The repressive situation in Iran is maximum. Four men have already been executed for example after hasty trials, in response to demonstrations and popular uprisings against the government of the very conservative Ebrahim Raïssi. For the time being, the international mobilization of intellectuals and artists remains very weak, out of prudence or fatalism, faced with the scale of a dramatic situation with hundreds of incarcerations, that of Panahi struggling more and more to make hear after more than 200 days behind bars. Aged 62, sick for a few months, he is now, according to his relatives, in an extremely critical situation.