Student Activist Spends Third Birthday Behind Bars

Persian2English – Iranian student activist Salman Sima, who was arrested and imprisoned a few times in Iran, the last time following the 2009 post-election protests, has written a short note for the occasion of Mehdi Khodaei’s birthday. Upon Salman Sima’s release from Evin prison, he escaped Iran and spent months in Turkey before Canada accepted him.
June 1 is Mehdi Khodaei’s birthday.

Mehdi, I remember well that, in your second imprisonment, you endured nearly four months in solitary confinement cells in ward 2A [of Evin prison-- a ward operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp].

I remember the hunger strike you launched during your first imprisonment.

Today (June 1), when I visited your Facebook profile, I saw the photo you had shared of me along with the text: “Live long, comrade”. [When I read this] I got choked up badly!

I remember how worried you were about the arrest and expulsion of university students younger than you.

This is the third birthday that you are spending behind bars. Without even a day of furlough, so far you have endured more than two years and three months of your seven-year imprisonment sentence.

Happy birthday to Mehdi Khodaei!

I miss your absence more than ever today. I’m really sad. Imagining you enduring the full seven years in prison is very painful to me!

Oh God. Everyone said that you would be released and I would stay in prison, but the opposite happened!

In February 2012, Canadian Senator Rose-May Poirier delivered a speech in the Senate Chamber of Canada in support of student activist Mehdi Khodaei:

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak on behalf of Mehdi Khodaei, an Iranian student and human rights activist, who is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Iran. Mehdi Khodaei has been detained since February of last year. According to the Human Rights House of Iran, he is confined in ward 350 of Evin Prison, which is run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He has also had to endure months of detention in solitary confinement and is deprived of communication with his family.

Khodaei was found guilty of “propaganda against the regime” and “acting against national security by organizing gatherings.” In other words, he is being persecuted for having exercised his rights to freedom of expression and freedom of movement.

As a member of the Senate of Canada, I also condemn the Iranian regime’s deplorable abuse of human rights and call for the immediate release of the unlawfully held prisoner Mehdi Khodaei.