Majid Tavakoli

Majid Tavakoli

Majid Tavakoli ( Persian مجید توکلی Majid Tawakoli ; * 1986 in Shiraz ) is a prominent student leader in Iran . He is studying at the Amir Kabir Technical University in Tehran . He was arrested three times, most recently on December 7, 2009 during the protests following the Iranian presidential election in 2009 . He was photographed in custody wearing women's clothes with a headscarf, in order to be humiliated as a coward and to discredit the student movement. Out of solidarity, other male students have had themselves photographed in women's clothes with headscarves and have posted the photographs on the Internet.

Tavakoli was together with another Iranian student leader Abdollah Momeni, from the Czech human rights organization People in Need of Homo Homini Award conferred in 2009.

The imprisoned student at Amir Kabir University Majid Tavakoli was transferred to solitary confinement and continued the hunger strike he started on May 23, 2010, which he had to give up after a week due to health problems. He published a letter and spoke out against the execution of Farzad Kamangar and four other prisoners in Tehran. He was then threatened with death by security forces. He started his hunger strike after the hunger strike of the Iranian director Jafar Panahi .

In January 2010, Tavakoli was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for “participating in illegal gatherings” and “insulting the Supreme Leader”. At the beginning of May 2011 this prison sentence was extended to nine years because Tavakoli had smuggled an open letter from Gohardascht prison for International Student Day on December 7, 2010. In it, Tavakoli and the student activist Bahareh Hedayat, who was sentenced to 10 years and who was also in prison, postulated academic freedom for the Iranian universities and denounced the Iranian government as "tyranny".

In the middle of 2011, the CDU MEP Michael Gahler took on a political sponsorship for Majid Tavakoli for the International Society for Human Rights . In 2013 Tavakoli received the Norwegian Student Peace Prize .

Web links

• IRAN: DEMAND FREEDOM FOR MAJID TAVAKKOLI! on the German website of Amnesty International

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christiane Hoffmann: The taboos fall like dominoes. In: FAZ.net . December 15, 2009, accessed October 13, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Iran Veiled Men in: Tagesspiegel of December 17, 2009
3. ↑ Iran and the power of the new media in: Telepolis from January 13, 2010
4. ^ Gabriela M. Keller: Opposition Movement: Why Iranian Men Protest in Veils . December 15, 2009 ( welt.de [accessed May 31, 2019]).
5. ↑ Homo Homini Award went to two arrested Iranian student leaders ( memento of the original from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (clovekvtisni.cz, English) accessed on December 17, 2012 
6. ↑ Muhammad Sahimi: Young Lions of the Green Movement . PBS Frontline, Tehran Bureau, January 2, 2011
7. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from July 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ Majid Tavakoli's mother is on a hunger strike. In: Julia's blog. May 26, 2010, accessed on May 31, 2019 (German). 
9. ↑ MEP Gahler takes over sponsorship for Iranian prisoner of conscience Majid Tavakoli in: ISHR-Report: Menschenrechte im Iran, 3/2011
10. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from December 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.