The leading members of the New South Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement, Latif Hasani, Ayet Mehrelibegli, Behbud Quluzade, Mahmud Fezli and Shehram Radmehr had gone on hunger strike for 28 days demanding an impartial and factual trial. Even though they have conditionally ceased the hunger strike on 9^th August, their health is gravely deteriorated and their lives are at imminent risk. The NEW GAMOH leaders had gone on the hunger strike demanding the Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal to revisit its cruel judgment of 9 years in prison against them. However, the regime has reacted with a harsher punitive measure and has ordered their exile from Tabriz prison, where they were previously apprehended, to the Rajaishahr Prison located  600-700 kilometers farther from their relatives’ residences.

The Iranian Revolutionary Tribunal which acts as an arm-length adjudicative body of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security has convicted the founders of YGAMOH in a preposterously prejudicial, unfair and fully one-sided “trial” held at the Tribunal’s Tabriz location. Their councils had not been provided with appropriate disclosures and were given no adequate time to prepare and present a defense.

The leaders of New GAMOH are penalized for simply establishing an overt, manifestly non-violent and a civil assembly, demanding the Right to Self Determination of the People of South Azerbaijan in accordance with the International Human Rights Declaration and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Iran is a signatory of both the Declaration and the Covenant.By co-signing the Declaration and the Covenant, Iran has undertaken to recognize its ethnic minorities’ entitlement to Self- Determination. Subsequently, what the leaders of YGAMOH have called for is lawful and legitimate. Accordingly, the leaders of YGAMOH are wrongfully detained, unjustly indicted, illegally prosecuted, and illicitly convicted.

Therefore, it is demanded that all false charges against YGAMOH leaders are withdrawn, and they are released immediately.

It is further called upon the Iranian government to release all other South Azerbaijani political prisoners namely, Said Matinpur, Hasan Hergoli, Abdullah Saduqi, Hamid Malikzade, Aziz Purvali, Huseyin Ronagi Maleki, Ali Jabbari, Shahrokh Zamani, Vahid Sheykhbegli, Mehdi Shafiq, Mehdi Kukhian, and others.

We are all cognizant that Iran has a disputation for ill-treatment of its prisoners. Many are deceased while in custody due to the horrible circumstances of prisons and injuries sustained as a result of ill-treatment and torture. Thus, it is presumed that South Azerbaijani prisoners are at imminent risk of torture and ill-treatment. It is likewise called upon international community to do everything in its authority to ensure that the aforementioned and other political prisoners are released immediately and unconditionally.

Advocacy Center for South Azerbaijanis

Huseyin Turkelli, the head of ACSA