Iran: Open Civil Society Letter Calling for Life-Saving Medical Treatment for Iran’s Longest Serving Female Political Prisoner

Despite credible concerns that Zeinab suffers from a life-threatening illness, Iranian authorities have repeatedly denied her access to adequate medical care. Zeinab is believed to suffer from kidney and gastrointestinal issues, pterygium, foot-and-mouth disease, impaired vision, and dental infections. Furthermore, since June 2024, she has reportedly been experiencing excruciating pain in her abdomen and is suffering from at least ten uterine myomas, causing her severe bleeding. One of the few doctors she has been allowed to see reportedly alerted that she could have cancer in her uterus and might need surgery, but she has not been able to undergo any further medical examination to produce an accurate diagnosis.

Zeinab must be properly examined, diagnosed, and provided with adequate treatment to prevent irreparable harm to her health and personal integrity.

Multiple UN bodies and experts have condemned Zeinab's detention and treatment. On 1 May 2025, nine UN Special Rapporteurs raised serious concerns about her prolonged arbitrary detention, worsening health, and alleged torture and other ill-treatment. They urged Iranian authorities to provide her with immediate and adequate medical care in a civilian hospital, stressing that "time is of the essence".

Over 100 days later, Iran has failed to respond and Zeinab's condition has further deteriorated. Rather than provide appropriate care, Iranian authorities have allegedly intimidated her, pressuring her to sign a letter of repentance in exchange for treatment or release.

This coercion is part of a broader pattern in which Iranian authorities condition medical care on political silence or remorse. Zeinab has refused to give in to such tactics.

Zeinab was violently arrested in 2008, at the age of 27, in western Iran. Since 2000, Zeinab had been assisting women in Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan by providing them education and social services, as part of her active engagement on women's rights with the social and political wings of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK). One of her last activities prior to her arrest on International Women's Day in 2008, was a visit to a girls' high school in Kamiaran, in Iranian Kurdistan, where she talked about the importance of International Women's Day and distributed flowers to the students.

Following her arrest, she was tortured, including by being beaten while blindfolded, flogged under her feet, threatened with rape, and held in prolonged solitary confinement by authorities seeking to force her to confess that she was a member of the PJAK. While her social and educational activism were supported by PJAK, there is no evidence she was part of its armed militant wing.

In December 2008, Zeinab was convicted on charges of Moharebeh ("waging war against God") and sentenced to death despite a lack of credible evidence and a deeply flawed trial, where she was not granted access to a lawyer. Her sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment. In 2016, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention determined that she was held arbitrarily because of her gender and activism for the rights of Kurdish women.

Zeinab's case is emblematic of Iranian authorities' repression of women and those who dissent. Former political prisoner Nasrin Parvaz warned in 2023 that the regime had intensified its use of systemic torture to silence activists since the 16 September 2022 death of Zhina Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran's morality police, which sparked the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protest movement. Today, as we mark the third anniversary of Zhina Mahsa Amini's death, we voice deep concern that Iran has recently escalated its crackdown on dissent, with women and girls in Iran facing persecution and discrimination.

In 2024 alone, 1,023 executions were recorded, highlighting Iran's continued use of the death penalty as a tool of repression against dissenting voices, including protesters and minorities. Among those at risk are Kurdish women activists and political prisoners such as Pakhshan Azizi, Verisheh Moradi, and Sharifeh Mohammadi, whose cases reflect the grave dangers faced by women who dissent. Recently, on 21 July 2025, six prisoners, including one woman, were reportedly executed in Yazd Central Prison, where Zeinab is currently held.

Zeinab's prolonged detention, medical neglect, and psychological abuse illustrate the Iranian government's deliberate strategy to punish, break, and silence political prisoners. We urge the Iranian government to take urgent steps to protect Zeinab Jalalian's life and uphold its international human rights obligations, including by:

• Immediately transferring Zeinab to a civilian hospital and providing unconditional access to adequate medical care;
• Ending harassment and intimidation, including efforts to force confessions or repentance in exchange for medical care;
• Releasing Zeinab - in line with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention's 2016 finding that her detention is arbitrary - and putting an end to her ongoing ill-treatment.

We also call on the international community - including UN bodies and Member States - to intensify pressure on the Iranian authorities. Despite years of findings and urgent appeals, the Iranian government has refused to comply with its human rights obligations. Coordinated and sustained international action is now vital to protect Zeinab's life and personal integrity.

Signatories:

Organisations

1. Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights
2. Ahwaz Human Rights Organization (AHRO)
3. All Human Rights for All in Iran
4. Association for the Human Rights of the Azerbaijani People in Iran (AHRAZ)
5. Baloch Activists Campaign
6. Balochistan Human Rights Group (BHRG)
7. Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (ECPM)
8. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
9. International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT)
10. Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO)
11. Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
12. Justice for Iran
13. Kurdistan Human Rights Association-Geneva (KMMK-G)
14. Kurdistan Human Rights Network
15. Kurdpa Human Rights Organization
16. League for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran (LDDHI)
17. Omega Research Foundation
18. Rasank
19. REDRESS
20. Siamak Pourzand Foundation (SPF)
21. United against Torture Consortium (UATC - as REDRESS, IRCT, OMCT, Omega)
22. World Organisation against Torture (OMCT)

Individuals

1. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, Co-Founder of Iran Human Rights
2. Farkhondeh Ashena, socialist workers' rights activist, former political prisoner
3. Elika Ashoori, actress and activist, daughter of former hostage Anoosheh Ashoori
4. Nazanin Boniadi, actress and activist
5. Ladan Boroumand, historian and human rights activist
6. Roya Boroumand, Executive Director of Abdorrahman Boroumand Center
7. Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner
8. Karin Karlekar, Director of Writers at Risk initiative at PEN America
9. Shaparak Khorsandi, comedian and author
10. Ramita Navai, journalist
11. Nasrin Parvaz, activist, writer of 'One Woman's Struggle In Iran, A Prison Memoir'
12. Richard Ratcliffe, human rights activist
13. Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, human rights activist, former hostage and political prisoner

Letter from Zeinab Jalalian

August 2025

Hello and warm greetings,

Opposing this regime means putting your life and the lives of your loved ones in danger.

The moment they find out you are against them, they fabricate charges and label you with heavy accusations just to eliminate you. And when they fail to achieve that goal, they bury us alive in prison for years like this through physical, emotional and psychological torture, discrimination, years of being denied phone calls and visits, arresting our loved ones, imprisoning them, and subjecting them to intense pressure over long periods.

Naturally, one of the defining qualities of any freedom fighter is resilience. They keep trying to stay strong and maintain their morale, all for the sake of their cause.

In a patriarchal society, women already endure countless hardships. But for women in prison, those hardships are multiplied, because imprisonment brings a different kind of pain. Being separated from
your children, your partner, your parents, your family - losing all your freedom.

When you are condemned to live in a place like prison, you witness so many forms of suffering and injustice inflicted on fellow inmates, and yet you can do nothing. That helplessness becomes another source of deep pain for me. It makes me sad. It brings me to tears. But I cannot do anything about it. After nearly 20 years in a place like this, you are forced into a collective way of living. Diseases, skin conditions, mental and psychological issues come for you. Worst of all, the poor prison diet leads to a wide range of physical illnesses. And as a political prisoner, you are subject to even more restrictions. Even when a doctor diagnoses you and confirms you need medication, you receive no treatment. Years of such medical neglect have made my illness worse. The medication no longer works, and now the doctor has prescribed surgery.

Despite the medical diagnosis clearly stating that I should be released due to my condition and undergo surgery, the prison authorities forwarded the report to the Legal Medicine Organisation. After a long wait, they responded by saying I am "fit to remain in prison".

Despite all this pain, suffering and illness, I am happy, because I have endured all of it in the pursuit of freedom. That means I stand on the right side of history.

Yes, I said this regime buried us alive. But as Che Guevara once said, "They tried to bury us, they did not know we were seeds", and we have sprouted.

I call on all freedom-loving women and men around the world not to be indifferent to the suffering and oppression inflicted on our fellow human beings, for example the Iranian women and men fighters who were imprisoned in Evin Prison.

It is heartbreaking that those same fighters who were once held in Evin - where the conditions were relatively better - have now been transferred to far worse facilities. So bad, in fact, that they do not even have a comfortable place to lay their heads. Their numbers are small, and their hygiene and food conditions are very poor.

Remaining silent in the face of this injustice and the crimes committed by the Islamic Republic against our fellow fighters is nothing less than a seal of approval for this criminal regime.

So let us say in one voice:
No to executions.
No to arrests.
No to exile.
No to gender discrimination.
No to ethnic discrimination.
No to discrimination based on political or religious beliefs.
And no to this one-dimensional, criminal regime.

Greetings,
Zeinab Jalalian