Following the publication of news about five female prisoners being on hunger strike at Women’s Ward of Orumiyeh Central Prison by Kurdistan Human Rights Network, the prisons authorities denied the news about the hunger strike in talks with governmental media.
Kurdistan Human Rights Network has been informed that after the massive spread of the news about the hunger strike at telegram channels, prison authorities visited the five prisoners and, while tacitly agreeing with their requests, demanded the strike be stopped immediately. So, the prisoners ended their hunger strike after a week on Tuesday, October 17th.
“Review of the monitoring systems at the prisons suggests that this claim is unfounded. Moreover, there has been no reports about unsatisfactory inspection procedures so far.”, Bani Hashemi, head of the West Azerbaijani Province’s Prison told Mizan News Agency while denying such news.
“On Wednesday, October 11, a number of prison guards searched the Women’s Ward of Orumiyeh Central Prison under the pretext of inspecting the prison. During this inspection, the prison guards seized a number of the prisoners’ personal belongings, including personal blankets of several female prisoners while claiming that the seized belongings were extra. The Seize of the private blanket of the detainees was met with massive protests by female prisoners as the weather is slowly getting cold. In protest to this action, five prisoners, who have spent many years at this ward, went on hunger strike.
During the past days following the end of hunger strike, prison authorities and the office of Prison’s Intelligence Department summoned a number of female prisoners and put pressure on them to disclose the name of the source who had reported the news to the Human Rights Media.
To monitor the conversation of detainees, authorities at the Orumiyeh Central Prison started enforcing a special calling card scheme in September. This new scheme means that every prisoner can only contact the 5 first-degree relatives whose telephone numbers are registered with the card.
