Artists' Activists Demand Release of 'An' Gallery Directors

A group of artists and activists from the visual arts sector, as well as gallery managers in Iran, have issued a statement calling for clarification regarding the status of two detained directors of the 'An' gallery. The signatories of this statement, numbering around 200, state that five months after the arrest of Afrin Nissari and her husband Karen Vafadari, their situation remains unclear. The detainees are the directors and founders of the 'An' gallery and art foundation in Tehran, who have been in custody since August of this year. Mr. Vafadari, who is Zoroastrian, and his wife Afrin Nissari hold dual Iranian-American citizenship. According to ISNA news agency, artists and activists in the visual arts sector have demanded 'transparency from judicial institutions' regarding the detention of Afrin Nissari and Karen Vafadari, stating: 'Fair and public trials are the rights of all segments of society, including religious minorities and social institutions, and given the cultural background of this family and their importance in the art community, expediting transparent information dissemination will help alleviate existing concerns regarding this matter.' Earlier, on December 3, Kate Vafadari, Karen Vafadari's sister, wrote a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, protesting the detention of her brother and sister-in-law and complaining about the actions of 'unknown' individuals for 'extorting' the family of these two prisoners in exchange for their release. She wrote that 'family members have faced framing for financial extortion, property seizure, and security threats.' In mid-August of this year, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the Tehran prosecutor, stated that judicial agents had 'discovered' a house belonging to two Iranians with dual citizenship, which he claimed contained 'four thousand liters of alcoholic beverages' and was essentially prepared for 'mixed gatherings and corruption for some diplomats from foreign countries and Iranians.' Kate Vafadari revealed in her letter that the Tehran prosecutor's statements regarding the arrest of 'two Iranians with dual citizenship' and the 'discovery of alcoholic beverages' from their home refer to Karen Vafadari and his wife. She also reminded that in Zoroastrian rituals, 'there is no difference between alcoholic beverages and, for example, vinegar, as both are products used in the home and life,' to the extent that a Zoroastrian may 'drink wine during mourning, and this is normal.' In her letter, she reported that one day after the arrest of Afrin Nissari and Karen Vafadari, agents took them handcuffed to their residence, tore artworks from the walls, smashed some in the yard, and confiscated others. After that, they were taken to the gallery, where some works were confiscated and broken, and the gallery was sealed. In another reaction to the detention of Afrin Nissari and Karen Vafadari, Roberto Toscano, the former Italian ambassador to Iran, called for their release in an open letter. Mr. Toscano, in a letter published by the International Human Rights Campaign, referred to the detainees as two of the 'most respected individuals he had seen and known during his five years in Tehran.'