The strike has temporarily ended once authorities met the prisoners across different wards and promised assistance in favor of prisoners’ demand.
“On 28th of April prisoners of Mehabad city started their protest by going on strike” A known source reported to Kurdistan’s human rights channel.
The resource also reported that “Recently the pressure and limitations in Mehabad prison continued to grow. The situation was worsened by prison’s supervising chief and judge stance towards prisoners’ demand which lead to strike of 500 inmates. Prisoners refused to take prison food and officially announced their strike to authorities.”
The source also pointed out that prison’s chief immediately visited the wards and requested the strike to end once he was informed of the strike news – However, inmates insisted to continue their strike. Furthermore, prison guards are currently on alert mode.
On August of 2015 overwhelming majority of Mehabad prison inmates from many wards along with 30 prisoners of Neswan ward participated in a strike that lasted for a day, protesting against increase of pressure and limitations from head of prison. At the time strike ended once representative of prisoners and lawyers from different wards held meeting with head of prison and their demand was accepted by the chief of facility. In that meeting chief of prison threatened to implement the execution of 20 of prisoners with death sentence and intimidated regular prisoners to file security cases for them.
Once Hosseinpur was appointed as chief of Mehabad prison he attempted to implement limitations in the facility. In first attempt he abolished the schedule of allowing visitors to meet inmates once every two weeks and reduced it to once a month with condition of permission from Hosseinpur himself. In past some of the inmates were working in prison’s workshop which enabled them to learn new skills and earn money but that facility was also retired after Hosseinpur was appointed. The condition of healthcare worsened to a point that emergency visit to clinic has stopped and inmates can only go to clinic only when it is during opening hours. It is worth mentioning that prison’s clinic only provides pain killers and no other medical attention is provided to the prisoners.
Source: Kurdistan Human Rights Network
Translated by Rojhelat.info
