Iranian political prisoner on hunger strike

A former political prisoner and the cellmate of prominent political prisoner, Jafar Azimzadeh has written a letter describing the time he served in the same cell with him. Mr. Mohsen Rahmani says when I learned that Jafar has been transferred to the hospital and lost consciousness, I couldn’t keep silent anymore. I couldn’t just stand back and see a strong man, a caring man who always had a smile on his face to fade away and die in vain. I could no longer live with a conscious knowing I could do something for him and I didn’t. “Jafar was always happy and with high moral. But now he has lost so much weight and even unable to walk to his own bed. He is getting thinner and thinner every day and seems tired. He is taking his last breaths,” Mr. Rahmani says in his letter. “When he first started on hunger strike, I tried to joke around and make him forget the pain and the hardship of hunger. I tried to make him laugh. He was a strong man with a healthy body. That’s why he lasted so many days without food or any nutrition. He used to tell me that he had lived a hard life and seen poverty all his life, so he would not break easily,” the letter continued. “Once I tried to remind him that he has tree young sons that need him and he would better give up and think about his children. He answered don’t you care about the lives of thousands of laborers who can’t feed their children and have to see them go to be hungry every night? I was ashamed. He used to scream when the base salary for a laborer is only half as much as the official rate of poverty line, how would you expect me to think about my own self and my own family?“Can you tell me why those people have to be arrested only for peacefully demonstrating in front of the country’s parliament just for asking their rightful rights? Is it not that the constitution allows peaceful protest? Under what law are they being framed and arrested? Some people have to struggle to get a piece of bread for their families, where others like some of these elite rob and plunder the country’s wealth and nobody does anything to them. They only asked for their basic rights. They were no danger to the country’s security…”On the end, Jafar Azimazdeh told me “I will stand to the end