Arrests of dissident filmmakers and opposition political activists have increased in recent days. The filmmaker Jafar Panahi, Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin festival in 2015, was arrested in turn on Monday July 11.
With our correspondent in Tehran, Siavosh Ghazi
Aged 62, Jafar Panahi is one of the most awarded Iranian filmmakers abroad, especially for his film Taxi Tehran. He was sentenced in 2010 to six years in prison and a 20-year ban on directing or writing films, traveling abroad or expressing himself in the media or on the networks.
He had participated in the 2009 protest movement against the re-election of conservative populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and yet continued to live and work in Iran.
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On Monday, he went to the Tehran prosecutor’s office to follow the case of director Mohammad Rasoulof and his colleague Mostafa Aleahmad, arrested on Friday for “disturbing public order”. All three are accused of encouraging protests after a building collapsed in the city of Abadan in southwestern Iran last May that killed 43 people.
They also called on soldiers and members of the security forces to lay down their arms and not to intervene against demonstrators who denounced the corruption and incompetence of local authorities.
The arrests of artists, trade unionists or dissident political activists have multiplied in recent days. This is particularly the case of Mostapha Tadjzadeh, a figure of the reform movement, who has multiplied criticism against power in recent months.
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