This image has been around the world.
That of Baktash Abtin, Iranian dissident poet and filmmaker, reading a book in prison clothes on his hospital bed, ankles tied.
Detained since September 2020 in Evin prison, the poet died of complications from Covid-19 which he contracted in detention, due to a lack of sufficiently rapid access to care at the Tehran hospital.
Human rights organizations blame this tragedy on the Iranian regime, which is said to have deliberately delayed the hospitalization of the poet, who died on January 8.
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Baktash Abtin was one of those who defended freedom of expression at all costs, sometimes to the detriment of their own lives.
To understand his history, we have to go back to 2016, when he was arrested for participating in the commemoration ceremony for Iranian opponents and intellectuals murdered in 1999. At the time, under the mandate of reformist President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005 ), intelligence ministry staff were first judged in Iran as "
irresponsible
" for killing regime opponents.
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This participation in this tribute earned the poet to be sentenced in 2019 to six years of imprisonment for
“assembly and collusion against national security”
and
“propaganda”
against the Republic. Sanction which also hit two other members of the Iranian Writers Association (IWA), Keyvan Bajan and Reza Khandan-Mahabadi. But the poet accepted his fate. “
What is lacking in our country are people who resist and who fight. This is why I would like to sacrifice my life, with determination, for freedom while I am young ”,
he confided before his incarceration.
A vision that was hailed by the writers' rights group PEN America, which awarded him and his two colleagues the PEN-Barbey Freedom to Write
award
.
Support from human rights organizations
“Baktash Abtin died because the Iranian government wanted to muzzle him in prison. It is a tragedy that could have been avoided. The Iranian justice chief must be held accountable, ”
blasted Hadi Ghaemi of the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). It is not the only one to carry this speech. “
The anti-freedom regime murdered our brave and distinguished member. The illness and stress of the first ten days of hospitalization, imposed by security agents, destroyed Abtin's body
, ”said the Iranian Writers Association in a statement released on January 8, adding that at that time the poet was "
a half-living body
".
According to her, the jailers have slowed down her access to vital care, which is also deplored by the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
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On the press side, only certain reformist titles have publicly mentioned the poet's death.
Like the Iranian designer and illustrator Mana Neyestani, who denounced these tragic shortcomings.
His caricature represents the tragic fate of the poet: on a black background, he appears from behind, his head bowed, a feather between his bound fists.
Then behind, a pistol held by an anonymous hand pointed at the back of his neck firing the coronavirus as a bullet.
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The day after his death, on January 9, his funeral was held in southern Tehran. The Iranian authorities have also changed this date to avoid a possible crowd movement. But some opponents still chanted certain slogans during the ceremony, such as "
This free poet is the tyrant's nightmare
" and "
Death to the murderous government
".
The sad end of the poet's life in prison is not an isolated case in Tehran.
Last September, Amnesty International unveiled a study accusing Iran of failing to explain the cause of 72 deaths of men and women in detention since January 2010, "
despite credible information indicating that they resulted from torture or other ill-treatment
”.
