Hashim Khwastaar, Imprisoned Teacher, Re-Trialed

Hashim Khwastaar, a 70-year-old imprisoned teacher and civil activist, was tried on Tuesday, September 25, in the Criminal Court 2 of Mashhad. According to HRANA, the news agency of human rights activists in Iran, the charge against this labor activist is "spreading falsehoods and disturbing public opinion," and he participated in his trial via conference call. Khwastaar, a signatory of a letter calling for the resignation of Ali Khamenei, has been imprisoned in Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad for the past four years. HRANA reports that Khwastaar's family has only been able to visit him twice in the past few years due to "obstruction" by the judicial authorities in Mashhad. According to this report, Khwastaar, who is serving his sentence without adherence to the principle of separation of crimes, was also sentenced to two years and six months in prison in another case earlier this year. Khwastaar is among fourteen political and civil activists in Iran who, in an open letter on June 11, 2019, called for Khamenei's resignation from leadership and fundamental changes to the constitution. This labor activist was arrested in August 2019 and sentenced to 16 years in prison, two years of exile to Nikshahr County in Sistan and Baluchestan Province, and a two-year travel ban. Currently, several teachers and labor activists, including Khwastaar, Ismail Abdi, Rasool Badaqi, Masoud Farhikhteh, Aziz Qasemi, Farzaneh Nazaranpour, Anoush Adeli, Mahmoud Sedighi-Pour, Mehdi Fathi, Hossein Ramadanpour, Omid Shah-Mohammadi, Javad Lal-Mohammadi, Mohammad-Hossein Sepehri, and Jafar Ebrahimi, are imprisoned on security charges. Earlier, Najat Bahrami, a journalist and former deputy of public relations in the Ministry of Education, stated to Voice of America that despite decades of ideological bombardment by the Islamic Republic, the young generation of Iran is one of the "most secular" youth generations in the world and will make history. Recently, the General Secretary of Education International, in an open letter to Ali Khamenei, called for the release of imprisoned union members, including Khwastaar, Jafar Ebrahimi, Ismail Abdi, Asghar Amirzadegan, and Aziz Qasemi. David Edwards, in this letter, described the continued imprisonment of these teachers as a violation of workers' fundamental rights to organize and freedom of expression. Several labor activists and teachers have been arrested in various cities in Iran, including teacher Mehrab Farsad Mokhtari, who was arrested in Nowshahr. The Iranian Retirees Council stated that educational policies have separated some children from schools.