Women rights activists in Iran continue to face harsh measures and severe sentences over their convictions, a human rights group said Thursday, even as the new president-elect publicly criticized the treatment of women during his electoral campaign.
Sharifeh Mohammedi, a workers' rights activist, was handed down a death sentence by Iran’s Revolutionary Court earlier this month on charges of “armed rebellion against the state,” after she was accused of belonging to a banned Iranian Kurdish party, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a Thursday press release.
Mohammedi had been advocating for women’s rights and labor rights and was a member of the Coordination Committee to Help Form Workers’ Organizations — which she reportedly quit in 2013 — before she was arrested by intelligence agents from her home in Rasht, in the north-central province of Gilan, last December.
Iranian authorities consider, "without evidence" according to HRW, the committee to be affiliated with Komala, a Kurdish social democratic party, and have arrested dozens of its members since its founding in 2005.
