MESOPOTAMIA NEWS WEEKLY REPORT KURDISTAN – IRAN  

Iran  8 April 2020

• The coronavirus has killed at least 400 people and infected thousands more in Iran’s Kurdish region. The Iranian regime, despite releasing some prisoners to mitigate the spread of the virus, continued its campaign of harassment and arrests targeting Kurdish activists and intensified its crackdown on journalists covering the government’s response to the pandemic. In Kermanshah, Iranian authorities detained a Kurdish journalist named Ghulam Raza Alaa after the province’s governor filed a lawsuit against him for sarcastically writing “the governor has the pandemic.” In Marivan, an Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced a Kurdish man, Aram Khosry, to three years in prison for “cooperation with a Kurdish opposition party.”  Khosry was previously detained by the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Ettela’at). Meanwhile, Iranian authorities transferred a number of prisoners from Mehabad to the Urmia Central Prison. Concurrently, a Kurdish activist named Kamaran Darweshi, who is currently serving a five-year sentence for “connection with Kurdish political parties,” launched a hunger strike to protest the Iranian regime’s assault on Kurdish political activities.
• The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported three Iranian soldiers were injured by mines near Saqqez on March 31. It is unknown whether the mines were recently placed or remnants from the Iran-Iraq War.

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