Iran: Jafar Panahi is third Iranian filmmaker arrested in lower than per week

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Panahi, 62, who gained the Golden Bear on the Berlin Worldwide Movie Competition in 2015 for his movie “Taxi,” was arrested in Tehran on Monday when he went to the prosecutor’s workplace to examine on filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran’s semi-official information company Mehr reported.

Rasoulof, a fellow Golden Bear winner in 2020 for “There Is No Evil,” and his colleague Mostafa Aleahmad had been arrested final Friday, accused of trying to “inflame and disrupt the psychological security of the group,” in line with the semi-official Fars Information Company.

Reuters, citing the IRNA state news agency, reported that the pair had been amongst a gaggle of filmmakers who had signed a letter calling on the safety forces to put down their weapons throughout protests that adopted the lethal collapse of a 10-story constructing within the metropolis of Abadan on Might 23.
Human Rights Watch mentioned the arrests had been a part of a “crackdown … on peaceable dissent amid the deterioration of financial circumstances and what seems to be a impasse in reviving the worldwide group’s nuclear cope with Iran.”

HRW described Rasoulof as an outspoken critic who was beforehand sentenced in an Iranian courtroom to “one yr in jail and a two-year ban on making movies on the cost of ‘propaganda towards the system’ for the content material of his films.”

The filmmakers’ arrests have drawn worldwide condemnation.

On Monday, the Cannes Movie Competition issued an announcement demanding “the rapid launch” of Panahi and of Rasoulof and Aleahmad, who it mentioned had been “protesting towards violence towards civilians in Iran.”

“The Competition de Cannes strongly condemns these arrests in addition to the wave of repression clearly in progress in Iran towards its artists,” it mentioned.

Panahi’s movie “three Faces” gained finest screenplay at Cannes in 2018; Rasoulof’s work has gained a number of awards on the pageant since 2011.

‘Repressive reflex’

Individually, Iran’s former deputy inside minister, Mostafa Tajzadeh, was additionally arrested final Friday, accused of colluding towards nationwide safety, and of “publishing lies to disturb public opinion,” in line with Iran’s semi-official Fars Information Company.

Tajzadeh, who briefly served underneath President Mohammad Khatami in 1998, has develop into an outspoken authorities critic, not too long ago tweeting to his 350,000 followers that “in line with the newest Stasis survey, 57% of Iranians” help the Iranian nuclear deal “and 17% are towards it.”

Tajzadeh was beforehand arrested and convicted of sedition in 2009 following a disputed presidential election that sparked huge protests. He was sentenced to jail that yr and released in 2016.
The US pulled out of the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2018 underneath then-President Donald Trump; since then, Iran has taken a collection of steps that breach the bounds imposed by the deal on its nuclear program.
US and European officers have repeatedly warned that the window for a return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — as the deal is known — is narrowing, with State Division spokesperson Ned Price saying in mid-June that “it is an open query if we are able to get there.”
Iran’s authorities has confronted public anger in latest months over rising meals costs, exacerbated by Western sanctions, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine warfare.
Anti-government protests had been reported in a minimum of 40 cities and cities throughout Iran in Might; demonstrators chanted anti-government slogans and known as for the autumn of the regime, in line with social media movies posted by activists.
“Unable or unwilling to sort out the various extreme challenges dealing with Iran, the federal government has resorted to its repressive reflex of arresting common critics,” mentioned Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “There is no such thing as a purpose to imagine these latest arrests are something however cynical strikes to discourage common outrage on the authorities’s widespread failures.”

CNN’s Sahar Akbarzai, Ramin Mostaghim, and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

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