Around 100 people attended a campaign at ASU’s Tempe campus to support an Iranian human rights activist who is currently in prison.
The Arizona chapter of Democracy and Freedom for Iran hosted the campaign and supporters gathered just outside the Fulton Center Friday to hand out informational fliers and spread the word of a young Iranian woman named Shiva Nazar Ahari.
The organization was founded to promote awareness of corruption in Iran’s government, said Renee Behinfar, co-founder of the organization.
Nazar Ahari was imprisoned in December 2009 in Evin, a prison located in the capital of Iran, for advocating human rights, she said.
The campaign was part of a global movement campaigning for the release of Nazar Ahari for Global Shiva Day, which was recognized Friday.
“There are cities around the world doing the same thing, perhaps in different ways, but raising advocacy and awareness about her case,” she said.
It’s important for the organization to advocate and speak out to the students at ASU because it has always received a good response from the students, said Tooraj Bakhtiari, the group’s co-founder and an ASU alumnus.
“[The organization] has always had incredible results coming and talking to the students because they’re like a sponge; they want to know more,” Bakhtiari said. “We bring [the campaign] to other places, but ASU is really important.”
Behinfar, Bakhiari and other volunteers advocated and had students sign petitions for the release of Nazar Ahari.
The Arizona chapter of Democracy and Freedom for Iran, along with other global organizations, campaign for the release of the young woman and hope that one day Iran will become a democratic country, Behinfar said.
“[The regime] suppresses its people, engages in severe human and civil rights violations, and they don’t have any accountability at all,” Behinfar said.
One of the volunteers, a psychology graduate student, is originally from Iran and still has family living under the regime. She did not want to share her name because she fears that her family in Iran may be punished.
“Of course if you are not really affected right now, if you haven’t been through that situation, then you don’t think about it that much,” she said. “But you try to be more cautious because it’s just not only affecting you, but it may affect your family that is living there.”
Many of the others involved in the organization also have family members who currently live in Iran, Bakhtiari said.
“I actually just had my aunt who just came back from a visit [with] her daughter,” he said. “We know and hear whatever is going on besides what is in the news.”
Bakhtiari’s aunt recently returned from Iran and experienced firsthand the effects of the regime. Iranians can remain safe as long as they follow the strict rules of the regime, he said.
The Arizona chapter of Democracy and Freedom for Iran hosts events throughout the state about once a month, Behinfar said. The organization has not yet planned its next event.
Reach the reporter at cottens@asu.edu
