{"id":73251,"date":"2019-01-31T19:06:03","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T00:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/?p=73251"},"modified":"2019-01-31T19:08:09","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T00:08:09","slug":"iranian-dervish-womans-health-declines-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2019\/01\/31\/iranian-dervish-womans-health-declines-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian Dervish Woman\u2019s Health Declines in Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A news outlet covering Iran\u2019s Dervish religious minority says a female Dervish prisoner beaten during her arrest 11 months ago has suffered a further health decline from exposure to secondhand smoke in jail. In a report published Monday, the news site, Majzooban Noor, quoted cellmates of detainee Shokoufeh Yadollahi<\/a> as saying she has suffered severe headaches and weakness because of the fumes from opioid and cigarette use by other prisoners in her ward. Majzooban Noor did not explain how it obtained the information from Yadollahi\u2019s cellmates at Qarchak women\u2019s prison, also known as Shahr-e-Ray prison, east of Tehran. Its report cited Dervish inmates at Qarchak as complaining that other prisoners in their ward, convicted of drug trafficking, robbery and murder, have been smoking opioids and cigarettes in shared spaces such as bathrooms and showers.<\/p>\n

Iranian Opposition Leader Raises Alarm About Detained Dervish Woman’s Health<\/p>\n

A reliable source in Iran\u2019s Dervish community confirmed Majzooban Noor\u2019s account of Yadollahi\u2019s declining health in a message to VOA Persian.<\/p>\n

There has been no official comment in Iranian state media on the treatment of Yadollahi or other Dervish women at Qarchak prison.<\/p>\n

Amnesty International<\/strong><\/p>\n

London-based rights group Amnesty International has reported that eyewitnesses saw Iranian security forces severely beat Yadollahi at the time of her February 2018 arrest, resulting in head injuries. Iranian security forces detained her and several hundred other Dervishes for involvement in antigovernment protests that turned violent in Tehran.<\/p>\n

Amnesty has said Yadollahi and other Dervish women arrested in those protests have been treated badly and arbitrarily detained at Qarchak since.<\/p>\n

Human Rights Watch<\/strong><\/p>\n

In an email to VOA Persian on Wednesday, Tara Sepehri Far, an Iran researcher at New York-based group Human Rights Watch, said HRW has learned from its own source that Yadollahi\u2019s lack of adequate access to medical treatment in prison has led to complications in her vision and sense of smell.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe transfer (into Qarchak) of new prisoners who allegedly smoke cigarettes and drugs does really affect her negatively,\u201d Sepehri Far said.<\/p>\n

A 2011 report by New York-based health news site Everyday Health<\/a> says cigarette smoke inhaled directly or secondhand is one of the 11 biggest triggers of headaches. \u201cNicotine \u2026 changes the size of blood vessels in your brain, and that can cause headache,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n

Sepehri Far also said the use of drugs is not uncommon in Iranian prisons.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not have updated information about Qarchak prison, but we have testimonies from several political prisoners who served their time in other prisons, and they speak about drug trafficking and usage in (those) prisons,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s government views Dervishes, also called Sufis, as heretics and subjects them to continued scrutiny and harassment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A news outlet covering Iran\u2019s Dervish religious minority says a female Dervish prisoner beaten during her arrest 11 months ago has suffered a further health decline from exposure to secondhand smoke in jail. In a report published Monday, the news site, Majzooban Noor, quoted cellmates of detainee Shokoufeh Yadollahi as saying she has suffered severe headaches and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}