Atena Farghadani ( fa, آتنا فرقدانی; born 29 January 1987) is an Iranian artist and political activist, who was imprisoned for 18 months. Amnesty International considers her a prisoner of conscience. She was released on 3 May 2016.

Arrest and imprisonment

One of her cartoons, in which she criticized a draft law which would outlaw voluntary sterilisation and restrict access to measures of birth control, portrayed Iranian government officials as

monkey Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incom ...

s and

goat The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of ...

s. After publishing her artworks on Facebook, she was arrested in August 2014 and jailed for three months in Evin Prison in Tehran on charges of spreading propaganda, insulting

members of parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members oft ...

, and insulting the

Supreme Leader of Iran The Supreme Leader of Iran ( fa, رهبر ایران, rahbar-e irān) is the head of state of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Supreme Leader directs the executive system and judicial system of the Islamic theocratic government and is the c ...

. She was released in November. Farghadani sent letters of protest over her treatment to

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei ( fa, سید علی حسینی خامنه‌ای, ; born 19 April 1939) is a Twelver Shia ''marja and the second and current Supreme Leader of Iran, in office since 1989. He was previously the third president o ...

, the supreme leader,

Hassan Rouhani Hassan Rouhani ( fa, حسن روحانی, Standard Persian pronunciation: ; born Hassan Fereydoun ( fa, حسن فریدون, links=no); 12 November 1948) is an Iranian politician who served as the seventh president of Iran from 2013 to 2021. ...

, the president, and the head of the prison service, but did not receive a reply. She then posted a video online in which she explained to the public about her experience in Evin prison and that she was being strip-searched, beaten and verbally abused by guards. In January 2015, she was arrested again. Three weeks later, she went on a

hunger strike A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke a feeling of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most ...

to protest against conditions at the prison. She suffered a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which m ...

in late February 2015. On 1 June 2015, judge

Abolghassem Salavati Abolqasem Salavati ( fa, ابوالقاسم صلواتی) (born 16 July 1967) is an Iranian judge and former head of the 15th branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran, Iran. In recent years, he had been the judge of numerous controver ...

of the Tehran court found her guilty on these charges and sentenced her to 12 years and nine months in prison. It is believed that she was held in

Gharchak prison Qarchak Prison ( fa, زندان قرچک, Zendân-e-Qarchak) is a prison for women located in Qarchak, in Qarchak County, previously part of Varamin County, Tehran Province, Iran (30 km SSE of the capital). It is also called fa, زندا� ...

. In June 2015, she smuggled out of prison a note in which she claimed she was subjected to a

virginity test A virginity test is the practice and process of determining whether a girl or woman is a virgin; i.e., to determine that she has never engaged in, or been subjected to, sexual intercourse. The test typically involves a check for the presence of a ...

and a

pregnancy test A pregnancy test is used to determine whether a female is pregnant or not. The two primary methods are testing for the female pregnancy hormone (human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)) in blood or urine using a pregnancy test kit, and scanning with u ...

for shaking the hand of her lawyer, who had visited her in prison after her trial. The claim was later confirmed by prison authorities. In September 2015, Farghadani was charged with an "illegitimate sexual relationship short of

adultery Adultery (from Latin ''adulterium'') is extramarital sex that is considered objectionable on social, religious, moral, or legal grounds. Although the sexual activities that constitute adultery vary, as well as the social, religious, and leg ...

" and "indecent conduct" for shaking the hand of her lawyer Mohammad Moghimi; Moghimi was also charged. She was reported to have gone on a hunger strike in protest.

Charges

* Sentenced 12 years and 9 months in June 2015, for drawing members of Iranian Parliament as animals to protest legislation against birth control, and posting the image to her personal Facebook * An Appeals Court reduced her sentence to 18 months for "propaganda against the state", she was acquitted of "assembly and collusion against national security" and a 3 year sentence for "insulting the supreme leader" was suspended for 4 years * She was fined 100,000 rials ($33 USD) for "insulting the supreme leader, president, members of the Parliament, and the Ward 2-A agents" who interrogated her * During her imprisonment she was charged with illegitimate relations for shaking hands with her lawyer in front of prison guards on June 13, 2015. The charge was thrown out of the Criminal Court on October 3, 2015

Draw4Atena

After an open letter by US-based campaign group Cartoonists Rights Network International, and an appeal by cartoonist Michael Cavna in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'', the artists and cartoonists around the world began sharing their cartoons across social media to help raise awareness of her case. The #draw4atena hashtag was created in

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for ...

s such as

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

and

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

has accepted these cartoons to share them globally.

Release

On May 3, 2016 Farghadani was freed again and the charges against her were dismissed. She has expressed no intent to leave her country.

Recognition

In 2015, Farghadani received the Courage in Cartooning Award in absentia from the Cartoonists Rights Network International. Two days after her release in 2016, she received the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent.

References

External links

Atena Farghadani Lambiek Comiclopedia biography.

Image of the controversial cartoon
{{DEFAULTSORT:Farghadani, Atena Amnesty International prisoners of conscience held by Iran 1987 births Living people Iranian women activists Iranian women's rights activists Iranian human rights activists Iranian prisoners and detainees Iranian cartoonists Iranian caricaturists Iranian dissidents People convicted of spreading propaganda against the system by the Islamic Republic of Iran Controversies in Iran