On this International Women’s Day, we demand freedom and justice for women imprisoned, disappeared, and persecuted around the world. We have compiled a list of women prisoners from various regions and countries as examples of state oppression, racism, male dominance, femicide, and transphobia that women are subjected to globally. Any attempt to document women political and social prisoners will always have glaring lapses and we do not have the capacity to document with the same degree of comprehensiveness across different countries and regions at the moment. With this initiative, we attempt to merely bring attention to the ubiquity of female imprisonment and make visible the often nameless and faceless cases of women in prisons and under persecution.
Content warning: state violence, police violence, patriarchal and anti-trans violence
Middle East/ West Asia
Palestine:
Khalida Jarrar
Khalida Jarrar is a Palestinian feminist, leftist, parliamentarian and defender of prisoners’ rights, Khalida Jarrar, was sentenced to two years in Israeli prison on Monday, 1 March 2021. Jarrar is a longtime advocate for the freedom of Palestinian prisoners and has served as the former Vice-Chair and Executive Director of Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. She is also a member of the Palestinian committee that acceded to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and presented evidence to the international body about ongoing Israeli crimes.
Khitam Saafin
Khitam Saafin is a leading Palestinian feminist and women’s organizer and a well-known international advocate for Palestinian women and freedom and justice for the Palestinian people. She has spoken around the world about the struggle of Palestinian women and served as chair of the Global Women’s March Palestine. Saafin is currently the President of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.
Shireen Issawi
Shireen Issawi is a human rights lawyer and political prisoner who fights for Palestinian prisoner rights by monitoring and documenting human rights violations committed by Israeli authorities against Palestinian prisoners held in Israel’s occupation prisons. Issawi has been arrested several times, the most recent in January 2019. Israeli authorities have issued an order which permanently bans her from practicing as a lawyer.
Syria:
Razan Zaytouna
Lawyer and human rights activist. She is the director of the Violations Documentation Center in Syria. Born in 1977 in Douma neighborhood in the suburbs of Damascus. She was abducted by Jaysh al Islam, a fundamentalist opposition group on December 9, 2013 with two of her colleagues, Samira Khalil and Nazem Hammadi and her husband, Wael Hmadeh. Her fate remains unknown.
Samira Khalil
She is a dissident and a former political prisoner. She spent four years in prison from 1987 – 1991. She was abducted by Jaysh al Islam, a fundamentalist opposition group in Douma on December 9, 2013 with three activists, Razan Zaytouni, Wael Hmadeh, and Nazem Hammadi.
Rania al Abbasi
She was abducted with her 6 children (aged between 1.5 and 14 years) and husband in the Dummar neighborhood in Damascus on March 11, 2013. Born in Damascus in 1970, she became a professional chess player and won several chess tournaments in Syria and the Arab World. Her fate remains unknown.
Rama Yasser Al Asas
She studied literature at the University of Damascus. During the revolution, she was an activist and a volunteer in humanitarian relief. Born in 1986 in Damascus. She was arrested in Baramka neighborhood in Damascus on August 27th, 2012 by one of the regime’s security branches . Her fate is unknown.
Tal Al-Mallouhi
The Syrian blogger, Tal Al-Mallouhi, was arrested on December 27 2009. Born in Homs in 1991. She began writing about the Syrian regime when she was 15 and was questioned multiple times by various security branches before her arrest in 2009. To this day she is in prison.
Turkish-occupied Rojava (West Kurdistan / Northern Syria)
Roshin Amouna Mohammed
Roshin Amouna Mohammed was kidnapped on January 6th, 2021, by an unknown armed group in the Turkish-occupied region of Afrin in Rojava (Northern Syria). A former member of the municipal council of Mobata under the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), she previously spent over two years in detention after Turkish forces first took control of the region in 2018, and is likely being targeted again
Ghazala Mannan Salmo
Ghazala Mannan Salmo, a 45 year-old Yazidi woman in the Turkish-occupied region of Afrin, Rojava (Northern Syria), was abducted by Turkish-backed mercenaries on December 4th, 2020, alongside dozens of other Kurdish residents accused of booby-trapping the car of a local warlord. After enduring several months of beatings and torture, Ghazala Salmo, a mother of six, has now reportedly been taken to Turkey to face charges of “terrorism”.
North Kurdistan / Turkey:
Gültan Kışanak
Gültan Kışanak is a prominent Kurdish politician, activist and journalist. She went through various tortures in Diyarbakir prison between 1980-1984 where she organized women prisoners’ resistance together with Sakine Cansız, one of the two female founders of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). She was elected several times as an MP into the Turkish parliament and, as a mayor of Diyarbakir, became the first woman mayor of a metropolis in Turkey. In 2016 she was detained by Turkish authorities and subsequently sentenced to 14 years and 3 months in prison for “being a member of a terrorist organization” and for carrying out “propaganda of a terrorist organization”. While in prison, she wrote a book about Kurdish women in politics titled The Color Purple of Kurdish Politics.
Leyla Güven
Leyla Güven is a prominent Kurdish politician in Turkey currently serving 22 years in Elaziğ prison on charges of “terrorism”. Güven, 56, is a former MP for the HDP (People’s Democratic Party) and co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), for which she was convicted of “membership in a terrorist group” in December 2020. She was previously detained in 2018 for publicly criticizing the Turkish military’s invasion of the predominantly Kurdish region of Afrin in Northern Syria.
Figen Yüksekdağ
Figen Yüksekdağ is a Turkish politician and journalist, who was a former co-leader of the left-wing Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) of Turkey from 2014 to 2017, serving alongside Selahattin Demirtaş. She was a Member of Parliament for Van since the June 2015 general election until her parliamentary membership was revoked by Turkish courts on 21 February 2017. She was arrested on 3 November 2016 for allegedly not cooperating in terror related investigations. She has been in prison since.
Sabahat Tuncel
Tuncel began her political career through the Women’s Branch of the People’s Democracy Party (HADEP) in 1998. In 2006, as the vice co-chairperson and Istanbul deputy of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), she was arrested on charges of terrorism. She ran as an independent candidate for the parliamentary elections from prison and after winning a seat in Istanbul, she was released in 2007. In 2016 she was once again arrested on terror related charges due to her membership in the legal party DTP and her statements and speeches at meetings and press conferences. She was sentenced to 15 years in prison. She received an additional 11 months in prison for calling President Erdoğan an “enemy of women” after he publicly stated, “women are not equal to men” and “women who reject motherhood are deficient and incomplete.”
Caglar Demirel:
Demirel is a former mayor of Derik province and an elected member of the Turkish parliament. She worked actively in several women’s cooperatives and non-governmental agencies in Kurdish towns of Turkey and carried out many projects in the fields of women’s and family health, women’s labor, women’s rights, education, and combating violence against women. Soon after being elected as a MP for the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in the Turkish parliament, she was arrested in 2016 and sentenced to 7 years and 6 months imprisonment. Demirel is one among more than 240 Kurdish women politicians who are currently kept in Turkish prisons.
Emine Beyza Ustun
Emine Beyza Üstün is an environmental engineering professor, well-known ecologist, and activist. She served as a deputy of People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in the Turkish parliament in 2015. She has criticized government policies concerning clean and sustainable energy and faced legal charges as an Academics for Peace signatory. In 2020, she was detained as part of an operation against 24 HDP members, including acting mayors, civil society activists, and academics, on charges of terrorist propaganda based on their call for participation in protests in the Kurdish region in 2014. The timing of the investigation indicates that the case is another politically motivated use of law by the Turkish state to silence any democratic opposition in the country.
Filiz Buluttekin
As the elected co-mayor of Sur district, Diyarbakir, Buluttekin was detained in a house raid in 2019. During the raid, the police forced Filiz Buluttekin, her spouse, and her 10-year-old child to the ground and held guns to their heads. After her arrest, she was removed from office on charges of membership in a terrorist organization. She is among 48 democratically elected pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) mayors who were replaced by government-appointed trustees. The Turkish government has used the removal of the co-mayors as a means of canceling the results of the elections in the Kurdish cities and provinces.
Sehriban Abi and Nazan Sala
Sehriban Abi and Nazan Sala are young journalists working for JinNews (“Women News” in Kurdish), a team of woman editors and reporters exclusively focusing on women’s issues. In 2020, they were arrested for reporting about two Kurdish villagers who had been tortured and thrown off from a national army helicopter. Abi and Sala were detained on the grounds that they were “reporting sensitive news belonging to the state” and were charged with “membership in a terrorist organization”. They have been held in unhygienic conditions despite the pandemic. Turkey is currently the country with the second-highest number of journalists in prisons.
Silan Delipalta
Istanbul University student Silan Delipalta was arrested in February 2021 for participating in the protests defending academic freedom in Turkey following president Erdogan’s appointment of a controversial academic figure as the rector to Bogazici University. As students and the academic staff started protesting, the authorities have responded with an excessive police force, summary arrests, and targeted house raids. Silan has been kept in isolation for 28 days, and not granted any outdoor time since she was detained. Turkish authorities have detained more than 560 protesters in support of Bogazici University at least in different cities, with 9 currently in pretrial detention and more than 25 under house arrest.
Turkey
Melek İpek
Melek İpek killed Ramazan İpek, her husband of 12 years, after being handcuffed, stripped and beaten by him. When Ramazan İpek left the house and told her that he would kill her and their two children when he comes back, Melek took his hunting rifle with her handcuffed hands and shot at him when he attacked her. In a recent visit by her lawyer in prison she said that she missed her girls and French fries but for the very first time in a very long time she has not been beaten for 27 consecutive days.
Nevin Yıldırım
Nevin Yıldırım who lived in a village in Isparta killed her rapist Nurettin Gider–married with two children– with a hunting rifle. After the murder she decapitated him and threw his head into the village square. On March 25, 2015, she was sentenced to life imprisonment for ‘deliberate killing’. The local court’s decision was upheld by the 1st Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals in May this year. A recent report states that Yıldırım will be released after 17 years if she does not violate the conditions of her parole.
East Kurdistan / Iran:
Zeinab Jalalian
Zeinab Jalalian is a Kurdish women’s rights activist who was sentenced to death for “enmity against God” (moharebeh) by an Iranian regime’s court in 2008 in an unfair trial that lasted a few minutes. Her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2011 and she is currently serving a life sentence in Iran. Since 2000, Zeinab had been assisting women in Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan by providing them education and social services. One of her last activities prior to her arrest on International Women’s Day in 2008, was a visit to a girls’ high school in Kamiaran, in Iranian Kurdistan, where she talked about the importance of International Women’s Day and distributed flowers to the students.
Zahra Mohammadi
Kurdish civil society activist and language teacher Zahra Mohammadi was sentenced to 5 years in prison earlier this year on national security charges. Mohammadi is the director and co-founder of Nojin Cultural Association which focuses on Kurdish language, literature and culture, as well as civil society activities. She was arrested on May 23, 2019, by Iranian security forces for holding seminars, and collecting assistance for the people affected by a devastating earthquake in the Kurdish province of Kermanshah. Mohammadi “has been accused of co-operating with Kurdish opposition groups and charged with national security offences for her peaceful activities empowering members of Iran’s marginalized Kurdish community, including through teaching the Kurdish language,” Amnesty International wrote in its appeal for her release.
Mojgan Kavousi
Mojgan Kavousi is a Rojelat Kurdish writer and researcher, of the syncretic Yarsan faith. She was first arrested in November, 2019, and was charged with “propaganda against the regime” and “provoking people to disrupt national security”, due to her Instagram post mourning the killings of demonstrators during the ongoing protests at that time and was also re-charged with a previous affiliation with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, even though the authorities had previously waived that charge.
Sakineh Parvaneh
Sakineh Parvaneh is a Rojelat Kurdish woman. Security agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran arrested her in November 2019, for meeting her family in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq without authorization. Her lawyer’s statement claimed that she was “sentenced to five years in prison and three years ban from membership in political groups on charges of membership in groups or factions opposing the state with the aim of disrupting national security,” and that the sentencing and court hearing occurred without any legal representation for her. Her sentence was later increased to 7 years for “inciting riots in prison,” after she painted the flag of Kurdistan and wrote slogans in favour of the Komala party in the women’s ward of Evin Prison.
Iran:
Fatema Tamimi
Fatema Tamimi is a 39 years old Ahwazi Arab political prisoner, cultural activist and documentarian who was arrested in the city of Jarahi in Ma’ashour (Mahshahr) on December 10, 2020 and transferred to an unknown location. Tamimi’s Instagram account is followed by more than 25,000 people. The result of their work was planned to be a 20 part documentary. So far, Mrs Tamimi has produced several short documentaries on poverty, addiction, unemployment and the social problems of the Arab people of Ahwaz.
Maryam Ameri
Maryam Ameri is an Ahwazi Arab political prisoner arrested in Ahwaz and transferred to an undisclosed location. Ameri had collected stories, lullabies and Arabic folk songs to record the Ahwazi oral history and literature.
Zeinab Savari
Zeinab Savari and her aunt Fatemeh Savari are local community organizers and volunteers who were arrested by the Iranian state security in early December 2020. During the Corona crisis, they both volunteered to go to deprived areas and villages around Haweyzeh and Roffayeh to teach students who did not have access to online education.
Sepideh Qolian
Sepideh Qolian is a 26 years old activist and political prisoner currently serving her5 years sentence at Iran’s notorious Qarchak women prison. She has been charged with “propaganda against the state”, “assembly and colluding to act against national security” and “agitating public consciousness”. She gained national attention after documenting and speaking up about the plight of unknown Ahwazi Arab women prisoners whom, as she witnessed, face extreme levels of torture and racism in Iranian prisons. She challenged the erasure of Ahwazi Arab women by becoming eyes and ears of the public while in prison and documenting the names and stories of otherwise unknown female prisoners. Qolian was tortured while in prison and her forced confessions was broadcast through state national channels. After her release Qolian filed a lawsuit against the TV presenter who was present during her interrogation while in prison.
Nasrin Sotoudeh
Nasrin Sotudeh is a human rights lawyer who was arrested and imprisoned on June 13, 2018. Sotoudeh faces a 12-year prison term which was (original sentence 38 year sentence) and 148 lashes. The charges against her are “collusion against national security,” membership in a human rights organization that opposes the death penalty, “promoting corrup” and appearing in public without a headscarf. She was arrested for taking on the legal cases of the “Girls of Revolution Avenue” (women who publicly removed their head scarves) and for opposing the Iranian judiciary’s latest decree that prevents political activists and dissidents from choosing their own attorney.
Saudi Arabia:
Israa al-Ghomgham
Israa al-Ghomgham was arrested in 2015 for her participation in the popular protests in the Shi’a majority city of Qatib, eastern Saudi Arabia,. Women are asking for different basic rights, like the right to drive cars as well as for the ending of the guardianship system. Israa participated in a protest which started in 2011, there are a lot of different demands in these protests, civilian rights, political rights, freedom of expression, and also demands about the release of human rights activists from prison. There was a campaign to prevent her execution, the execution was dropped but she is still serving in prison.
Maya’a al-Zahrani
Maya’a al-Zahrani is a women’s rights activist who has been in prisoned by Saudi Arabia’s state since 2018 for demanding basic rights for Saudi women. al-Zahrani was charged by the regime’s anti-terrorism court on sham charges.
Aziza Al-Yousef
Aziza Al-Yousef is a women’s rights activist and professor of computer science who was arrested in 2013 after she driving a car through Riyadh. and was forced to sign a pledge that they would not drive a car again. In 2016, she helped organise a campaign against the male guardianship system in Saudi Arabia. In May 2018 al-Yousef was imprisoned again by Saudi authorities, along with other women’s rights activists such as Loujain al-Hathloul, Iman al-Nafjan, Aisha Almane, Madeha al-Ajroush. Since November, 2018 Al-Yousef has been held in the Dhahban Central Prison. Al-Yousef and other female prisoners have been subject to physical and sexual abuse while in prison.
Nassima Al-Sadah
Nassima Al-Sadah, is a human rights activist and writer from the Shi’a majority eastern province Qatif and has fought for basic civil and political rights, women’s rights as well as the rights of the Shi’a minority for many years. Sadah and another prominent activist, Samar Badawi, were arrested on July 30, 2018 by Saudi authorities as part of a broader government crackdown on activists, clerics and journalists. Al Sada was placed in solitary confinement in early February 2019 in al-Mabahith Prison in Dammam. Sadah became a candidate in the 2015 Saudi Arabian municipal elections but was disqualified.
Bahrain:
Zakeya al-Barboori
Zakeya al-Barboori is a 31-year-old engineering student . Al-Barboori was held in solitary confinement for 28 days after being arrested and forcibly disappeared for participating in a protest. Isa Town Prison, the only female detention facility in Bahrain, has been cited in relation to numerous human rights violations, such as lack of access to medical care, physical and psychological abuse, threats of sexual violence, and religious discrimination.
Medina Ali
Medina Ali, a 27-year-old prisoner also held at Isa Town Prison, are both serving sentences following unfair trials. Ali was severely beaten following her arrest in 2017, and again in 2018 as a form of punishment. No arrest warrants were presented to justify the entering and searching of Medina Ali’s home and her trial was conducted in absentia.
Yemen:
Asma’a Al-Omaisi
Asma’a Al-Omaisi is a 22 years old woman who has been sentenced 15 years in jail by the Houthi militia’s court in Sana’a. In the midst of a brutal proxy war and Saudi aerial bombardments, Al-Omaisi has been facing severe violence inside prisons. Al-Omaisi was abducted in October 2016 at a checkpoint in Sana’a and since then has been severely tortured, inhumanely mistreated and received death sentences in unfair trials. In May 2017 she was finally formally charged and the others, and referred to the notorious specialized Criminal court in Sana’a, which examines the cases of “terrorism ” and “State security “. The charges included “helping a foreign state in a state of war with Yemen”, referring to the United Arab Emirates as a member of the Arab coalition.
Asma al-Omaisi’s father has told reporters that she had been beaten in front of him, including being punched and beaten with a stick by a policeman. She was also forced to watch two other detainees in the case who were tortured and hung from the ceiling by their wrists, where they were kicked and punched all over their bodies.
In 2019 the Abductees Mothers Association issued a statement condemning Al-Omaisi’s imprisonment.
North America
United States:
Andrea Circle Bear
Andrea Circle Bear was a 30-year-old member Native American from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota who was the first federally incarcerated woman to die from COVID-19, just 28 days after giving birth via C-section while on a ventilator.
Brandy Scott
Brandy Scott is a Black transgender woman serving a 22 year sentence at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, California. Brandy was criminalized for defending herself against her abusive partner. You can support Brandy by contributing to her Legal DefenseSurvival Fund set up by Survived and Punished organization, and also by signing+sharing this petition demanding her release.
Joy Powell
Joy Powell is an incarcerated female Black political prisoner whose grassroots activism against police brutality and racism resulted in her being framed by the police for serious crimes. The Rochester PD had warned her she was a “target.” She was not to get away with speaking out “against corruption, police brutality, and police justifications,” as the Jericho political prisoner organization put it. She was falsely charged with burglary and sentenced to 16 years in 2006. Additionally, in 2011, she was convicted of killing a man back in 1992, given 25 years to life, with no credible evidence, with witnesses later admitting to lying. Joy is currently in solitary confinement, harassed by guards, and, typically for prisoners, especially political prisoners, denied medical treatment for diabetes and asthma. Joy’s eldest son, Terrell Blake, was murdered by the Rochester Police on October 10, 2018.
Africa
Egypt:
Mahienour El-Masr
Mahienour El-Masry is a human rights lawyer and political activist who works to promote judicial independence and prisoners’ rights by organising peaceful protests, raising awareness using social media, and organising support for political prisoners. She was arrested by plainclothes security forces on September 22, 2020.
Esraa Abdelfattah
Esraa Abdelfattah is a journalist who was unlawfully kidnapped by Egyptioan military regime’s state security forces on…. on 30 August 2020, Abdelfattah was brought in front of the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) and questioned on fabricated accusations of “joining a terrorist organization”. Abdelfattah helped organise a popular grassroots group called April 6 Youth Movement Egypt in 2008, a group that was made to support the workers in the industrial town of El-Mahalla El-Kubra, who were planning to strike on April 6. Abdelfattah has been beaten and tortured while in prison.
Solafa Magi
Solafa Magi is a freelance journalist who writes articles on issues of human rights, women’s rights and refugee rights amongst other topics. Magi is currently being held at the notorious Al-Qanater women’s prison where reports recently emerged that security forces stormed the wing where political prisoners are detained and began beating and assaulting them. On 30 August 2020, she was investigated in a new case on charges of “joining a terrorist group”, “publishing false news”, and “misusing social media”.
Sanaa Seif
Sanaa Seif is an activist and film editor currently a political prisoner held in Qanater prison. Seif was an active participant of the 2011 revolution in Tahrir Square. For a decade Egypt’s military regime has continued to pressure her as well as her family. On 23 June 2020 Seif was abducted from outside the public prosecutor’s office, where she had been waiting to file a complaint of physical assault against her, her mother and her sister, and was bundled into an unmarked microbus by plainclothes police officers and driven away. Shortly after, she appeared in the state security prosecution who ordered her pre-trial detention pending investigation into charges of “spreading false news”, “inciting terrorist crimes” and “misusing social media”.
Sanaa together with her brother Alaa, who is also in prison, and other members of her family have gone on collective hunger strike several times, protesting unjust military regime’s unjust laws and inhumane prison conditions.
Algeria:
Dalila Touat
Dalila Touat, a 45-year-old physics teacher at Mostaganem High School. On January 3, 2021Touat was sentenced to 18 months in prison for her opposition to the enforced presidential election. She is accused of “publications undermining the public order”. Touat has been on hunger strike since the 3rd of January 2021 demanding freedom. You can sing and share this petition in support for her freedom.
Namia Abdelkader
Namia Abdelkader has been incarcerated since 2 december 2020 for speaking up against Algeria’s corrupt military apparatus. You can sing and share this petition in support for her freedom.
Luisa Hanoune
Luisa Hanoune is the head and co-founder of Algeria’s Workers’ Party. In 2004 she was the first woman to run as Presidential candidate in Algeria and was arrested after. She has been imprisoned once again since May 9th, 2019 as part of mass state repression of the ongoing revolutionary mobilizations in Algeria. Hanoune has been charged with “conspiring against the authority of the state and the army.”
Morocco:
Fadila Makhlufi
Fadila Makhlufi is an activist who has been sentenced to prison and fined by the Moroccan military regime for showing solidarity with the Movement of the Rif detainees and political prisoners.
Zimbabwe:
Falon Dunga
Falon Dunga is a female student activist currently behind bars at Harare central police. She was arrested with several others during protests calling for an impartial & independent judiciary system & in solidarity with other opposition voices leaders facing political trumped up charges.
Joana Mamombe
Joana Ruvimbo Mamombe is a politician, former student leader and a member of Movement for Democratic Change Alliance in Zimbabwe. She is known to be one of the youngest Zimbabwean members of parliament, representing Harare West. On 2 March 2019, she was arrested and charged with treason. It was alleged that she was attempting to overthrow a constitutional elected government after she led a protest. On 13 May 2020 she and two other women, MDC activists Cecilia Chimbiri and Netsai Marova, were abducted by masked assailants at a Harare protest against the government’s failure to provide for the poor during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two days later, the women were found, badly injured and traumatised, by the side of the road sixty miles from Harare. They reported having been tortured and repeatedly sexually assaulted. Joana Mamombe was arrested again on March 6th, 2021.
Cecilia Chimbiri
Cecilia Chimbiri is a youth campaigner for the Movement for Democratic Change. Chimbiri was abducted for two days at an anti-government protest in May 2020. On 13 May 2020, Chimbiri, Mamombe and Marova were abducted by masked assailants at a Harare protest against the government’s failure to provide for the poor during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two days later, the women were found, badly injured and traumatised, by the side of the road sixty miles from Harare. They reported having been tortured and repeatedly sexually assaulted. Cecilia Chimbiri was arrested again on March 6th, 2021. Chimbiri, Marova and Mamombe were rearrested by the police on 31 July whilst on their way to Harare Central Police Station where they were scheduled to report as part of bail conditions. Joana Mamombe and Netsai Marova were later released without charge. Cecilia Chimbiri was only released after being charged with insulting a police officer after a soldier falsely accused her of insulting him and assaulted her with a whip.
Netsai Marova
Netsai Marova is a youth campaigner for the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, who was abducted for two days at an anti-government protest in May 2020. On 13 May 2020, Marova, Mamombe and Chimbiri were abducted by masked assailants at a Harare protest against the government’s failure to provide for the poor during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two days later, the three women were found, badly injured and traumatised, by the side of the road sixty miles from Harare. They reported having been tortured and repeatedly sexually assaulted. Cecilia Chimbiri was arrested again on March 6th, 2021. Marova, Chimbiri and Mamombe were rearrested by the police on 31 July whilst on their way to Harare Central Police Station where they were scheduled to report as part of bail conditions. Joana Mamombe and Netsai Marova were later released without charge.
Eritrea:
Meseret Dhaba
Meseret Dhaba is a TV producer and journalist who was arrested on Feb 10, 2021. Reportedly she has been arrested for expressing solidarity with Oromo political prisoners on hunger strike protesting their unjust detention. Meseret has health problems but she has been denied access to medical treatment while in detention.
Latin America
Brazil:
Marielle Franco
Franco, a left wing politician and outspoken Rio de Janeiro city councillor, was assassinated as she was returning from an event encouraging black women’s empowerment in Rio on 14 March 2018. She had been critical of the police’s often deadly raids in densely populated favelas, and denounced paramilitary groups run by retired and off-duty police known as milícias. Two years after the assasination the crime remains unsolved and has become an example of the impunity regarding violence against human rights defenders in Brazil.
Verônica Bolina
In 2015, Verônica Bolina, a 25-year-old Black transgender woman was arrested, raped, sadistically beaten and disfigured by police and workers at the penitentiary system of the city of São Paulo, after being allegedly accused of murder, a charge which there has been no evidence of. Photos that showcased the aftermath of Bolina’s beating surfaced online, catalyzing the social media campaign, #SomosTodasVeronica (We Are All Veronica) demanding justice and police accountability for her assault. She was arrested once again in 2017 after experiencing a psychotic episode, and as of August 2019, she was still detained and had yet to be tried and sentenced.
Venezuela:
Vannesa Rosales
Vannesa Rosales is a feminist, teacher and social worker in the Pueblo Nuevo community of Mirada. On 12 October 2020, officials from the Venezuelan Corps for Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations raided the house of Vannesa Rosales in Mérida. She was accused of obtaining information on and medication to cause an abortion for a 13-year-old girl who had become pregnant as a result of rape.
Nicaragua:
Celia Cruz
Celia Cruz is a 34-year-old transgender woman and political prisoner who is currently incarcerated in the Jorge Navarro prison (La Modelo). She has shown strong leadership on Ometepe Island in the municipality of Moyogalpa, Rivas, has been arbitrarily arrested twice. After her latest arrest she has been held in several different men’s prisons, where she has been subjected to interrogations over her political activism, and to humiliation and abuse related to her dual condition of being both a politically pursued person and a trans woman. She has also been threatened and insulted by prison personnel and deprived of access to medicine, among other highly serious human rights violations.
María Esperanza Sánchez García
María Esperanza Sánchez García is a political prisoner who has participated in civic activism since April of 2018, with the eruption of the socio-political crisis that is currently ongoing in Nicaragua. The police accuse her of drug trafficking, which she denies. According to several different Nicaraguan human rights organizations, this charge seems to have become a State strategy to criminalize activists, imprison them, and deny that they are political prisoners.
Asia
Vietnam:
Can Thi Theu is a land-grab victim as well as right-rights activist who was arrested (without warrant) on June 24, 2020 by Vietnamese police during a house raid. She was harassed multiple times before she was arrested that day, her third arrest. She is being held incommunicado. Her sons, Trinh Ba Tu and Trinh Ba Phuong, have also been arrested.
Nguyen Thi Tam is a land petitioner and human rights defender who was kidnapped by state security forces on June 24, 2020 while going to the local market.
Doan Thi Hong was arrested on September 2, 2018, without any charges or arrest warrant, and her family didn’t know her whereabouts for a long time. Hong is a single mother, and her daughter was only 30 months old at the time of her arrest. She was held incommunicado for one year. During that time her family was not allowed to see her, including her young child.
Dinh Thi Thu Thuy is a human-rights as well as environmental-rights activist, and she is also a single mother of a nine-year-old child. Thuy was held in incommunicado pretrial detention and did not get to see her son until December 2020. She was sentenced to seven years in prison on January 20, 2021, and has been severely ill while imprisoned.
Hong Kong
Carol Ng Man-yee
Carol Ng Man-yee, is currently in jail on charges of subversion for participating in the 2020 primaries to determine the slate of pro-democratic candidates for the now postponed 2020 Hong Kong Legislative Council elections. Ng is a long-time labour activist, serving as the general secretary of the British Airways Hong Kong International Cabin Crew Association, and is the former chairperson of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Union.
Winnie Yu
Winnie Yu, is currently in jail on charges of subversion for participating in the 2020 primaries to determine the slate of pro-democratic candidates for the now postponed 2020 Hong Kong Legislative Council elections. Yu is a nurse and founder/chairperson of the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance. Yu played a pivotal role in leading a medics strike that forced government concessions in relation to COVID-19 pandemic control, and organizing the ‘New Union Movement’, mass union drives that resulted in the formation of dozens of new labour unions since 2019.
China
Li Qiaochu
Li Qiaochu is detained on charges of subversion for reporting on torture and ill-treatment at the Linshu County Detention Centre in Shandong, China. Li has been denied access to her family and lawyer, and there are concerns that she is at risk of torutre. A researcher and feminist/labour activist, Li has previously advocated for migrant workers forcibly evicted from their homes in Beijing and against sexual violence as a part of #MeToo campaigns.
Philippines:
Reina Mae Nasino
Reina Mae Nasino, is a 23 years old urban poor community organizer, who was arrested in November 2019 and gave birth to Baby River while in prison. Her baby was separated from her by the authorities, and lacking mother’s care and nourishment, her baby got sick. Reina’s plea for a furlough so she could take care of her sick child fell on deaf ears. Baby River died without the mother seeing her child. At the wake of Baby River, 47 members of the PNP guarded Reina depriving her of her privacy to grieve and say goodbye to her daughter. In 2020 she filed a lawsuit against the police and the prison guards The complaint alleges that their collective action of refusing to accommodate the baby inside prison, to the treatment of the activist during burial, amount to mental torture.
Amanda Echanis
Amanda Echanis is a peasant organizer and the daughter of Randall Echanis, consultant in the peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) who was brutally murdered by elements believed to be with the military and police forces. Echanis and her one-month old baby Randall Emmanuel, were arrested in Baggao, Cagayan last December 2 by elements of the 77th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army, PNP and CIDG, and are now detained at the Camp Adduro in Tuguegarao City.
India:
Kalpana Maiti:
Starting in the 1990s, Kalpana Maiti was a full-time political activist working with tribal communities in a poor rural district in West Bengal and made significant contributions to building the historic movement of Jangalmahal. She was the first woman in the West Bengal State Committee of the Communist Party India (Maoists) in 2006. In 2010 she was arrested and has been in prison since with a total of 7 cases. She has been subjected to severe mental torture. One of her cases, that of an attack on the camp of paramilitary Eastern Frontier Rifles (EFR) in Silda, is still ongoing, and no one knows when the trial will end. While in jail, Kalpana led a successful movement to demand distribution of sanitary napkins to all female inmates. Suffering from serious medical conditions like diabetes, spondylitis, thyroid malfunction, depression, etc., she is denied proper medical care.
Thakurmoni Murmu:
Murmu was instrumental in involving a large number of women in the uprising of Lalgarh. She became a role model to young women in the Jangalmahal. Right before the 2016 assembly elections and accused in more than 10 cases in some of which she was denied bail. While in prison, she struggled to demand rights and dignity for the prisoners as a result of which she was subjected to torture. Thakurmoni decided to study while in prison as before joining politics, had the opportunity to study only till the 8th grade. However, the jail authorities have continuously tried to inhibit her pursuit. Among other obstacles, jail authorities took away her study desk and chair in response to her going on a hunger strike with a demand for an increase in food allowance.
Akka Parobai Patel
Akka was arrested by the ATS (Mumbai) in February 2012 as she came to Mumbai for medical treatment and was implicated in the NIA case. Since then she has been in prison where she has been subjected to torture. She has not received any medical treatment and her condition has worsened. She cannot move around on her own. There is also a language barrier, as she does not know any other language than Telugu and some bits of Hindi. Since her arrest, she has had no contact with anybody from her family. Her life partner, Chakka Krishna Rao, is imprisoned for life in another case.
Hirandi Mangal Singh Gaude:
Hirandi was arrested along with her life partner Dinesh Wangkhere by the Mumbai Anti Terror Squad in February 2012. They too were implicated in the NIA case by the ATS. Since then, she has been in prison. The trial against her NIA case has not even been initiated. Till today, Hirandi has not met anybody from her family. She meets her expenses within the prison with the money she earns doing stitch work. While in Alipore jail, in 2017, along with Thakurmoni and Paro Patel, she was also violated and tortured by the jail authorities.
Jyoti Jagtap:
Jyoti Jagtap is an anti-caste cultural activist associated with Kabir Kala Manch. She was arrested by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on 8 September 2020 in the state of Maharashtra. She has been charged with, among other things, sedition, waging war against the government of India, promoting enmity between communities, criminal conspiracy and terrorism-related sections of the UAPA.
Sudha Bhardwaj:
Sudha Bhardwaj is a human rights lawyer, with a focus on protecting the rights of adivasi (indigenous) people in the state of Chattisgarh. She has acted as legal representation in several cases of extrajudicial executions of adivasis and has represented adivasis and activists before the National Human Rights Commission of India. She also serves as the General Secretary of the Chattisgarh People’s Union for Civil Liberties. She was initially placed under house arrest in August 2018 and then moved to the Byculla Women’s Prison in Mumbai under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). On 8th of February 2021 a U.S. digital forensics firm reported that the digital evidence (including documents and incriminating letters) used to implicate Sudha Bharadwaj and other activists had been planted.
Masarat Zahra
Masarat is a freelance photojournalist from Kashmir and a member of the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI). She has been covering the situation on the ground in Kashmir for the past four years. She was arrested under the UAPA on April 20, 2020.
Shoma Sen
Shoma Sen is a member of Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression. She has been active with workers’ movement starting from the Mumbai’s 1980s workers strikes and contributed to the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights in their work and the publication of their magazine “Adhikar Raksha”. As a student activist she had worked with the Vidyarthi Pragati Sangathana and edited a student magazine called “Kalam”. She was arrested on June 6th, 2018 under the UAPA.
Gulfisha Fatima
Gulfisha is a 25 year old student activist from New Delhi. She was actively involved in the women-led protest in Seelampur in North East Delhi against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). She was arrested under the UAPA on April 9, 2020. Though she was granted bail in connection with some cases filed in the Jafrabad Police Station, she remains incarcerated in FIR 59/2020 of the Delhi Police Crime Branch, which invokes the UAPA.
Annapoorna
Annapoorna is a labour rights defender, an advocate and an executive member of the Pragatisheela Karmika Samakhya, a workers’ union in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Over the past several years, she has worked with human rights movement in India, advocating for Dalit, women’s and worker’s rights. On 15 December 2020, police personnel arrested woman human rights defender Annapoorna from her house in Vishakapatnam alleging her links to Maoist factions. Annapoorna is currently being detained at the Vishakapatnam Central Jail.
Indonesia:
Sayang Mandabayan
Sayang Mandabayan (34), one of the few women to have ever been charged with treason, was arrested and detained in September 2019 after speaking at protests during the West Papua Uprising when police found 1496 small Morning Star flags in her bag. As a result of her arbitrary and unlawful detention, she is separated from her 1, 2, and 3-year-old young children, and is only occasionally able to breastfeed her youngest child in Manokwari of West Papua. She lost her job at Sorong City Council as a result of her arrest and detention. A picture of her breast feeding her child in prison went viral in Indonesia and beyond, with calls for her release.
Pelpina Werinussa
Pelpina Werinussa, 72, and her husband Izaak Siahaja, 80, were arrested because they had the RMS flag displayed inside their home. Siahaja was convicted of treason and sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Werinussa and their three guests – Johan Noya, Basten Noya, and Markus Noya – were sentenced to five years in prison, also for treason.
Myanmar:
Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing, 20, died after being shot in head by police in a crackdown of the anti-coup protests in Myanmar. At the time of the shooting, the army’s True News Information Unit said security forces used only non-lethal weapons and that the police were investigating
Kyal Sin was one of a number of teenagers who died when protesters across Myanmar were attacked by police with live bullets and clubs.
Russia:
Darya Polyudova
Left-wing activist and leader of the Left Resistance movement Darya Polyudova became the first victim of the newly introduced Article 280.1 of the Russian Criminal Code (incitement of separatism) after an attempt to organise a ‘March for the Federalisation of Kuban’ in Krasnodar in 2014. She was found guilty and sentenced to two years in a low security penal colony. In January 2020, the FSB initiated criminal proceedings against her under Part 1 of Article 280.1 of the Russian Criminal Code (public incitement of separatism, punishable by up to four years’ imprisonment) and Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Russian Criminal Code (public justification of terrorism using the Internet, punishable by up to seven years in prison). In mid-January the activist was taken into custody.
Maria Alyokhina
Alyokhina is an activist and a member of the feminist group Pussy Riot. Earlier this year, she was accused of committing “Incitement to a violation of sanitary and epidemiological rules”, which entails up to 2 years in prison, in connection with calls to come to peaceful protests on January 23, 2021. She has been under house arrest since January 29, 2021. Previously, in 2012, she was sentenced to 2 years for “hooliganism committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy or by an organized group”) for participating in a punk prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
Eastern Europe
Belarus:
Katsiaryna Barysevich
Earlier this month, Barysevich was sentenced to 6 months in jail. The charges stemmed from her article from November 2020 about the death of a man during a protest calling for the resignation of President Aleksandr Lukashenko, in which she questioned authorities’ explanation for the man’s death. Barysevich was arrested on November 19, 2020, according to CPJ research, and has been detained since then.
Maria Kolesnikova
Maria Kolesnikova, a leader of the opposition in Belarus, was detained by masked men in September 2020 in Minsk, driven to the border with Ukraine and ordered to leave the country. But she refused and tore up her passport. She has been in custody ever since, charged with an attempt to seize power. Her detention was extended by two more months in January. Kolsnikova’s arrest came after weeks of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko.
Katsiaryna Andreyeva and Darya Chultsova
Journalists Katsiaryna Andreyeva, 27, and Darya Chultsova, 23 were arrested during a police raid in their apartment on November 15, 2020. They were providing media coverage of the popular anti-government protests. The two journalists have received two-year jail sentences under the fabricated charges of “organising actions rudely violating public order.”
Southern & Western Europe
Spain:
Dolors Bassa
In January this year, jailed pro-independence prisoners in Catalonia have been allowed to leave jail with their privileges restored after being suspended two months earlier by Spain’s Supreme Court. One of them was Dolors Bassa, an educator, psychopedagogist and Catalan politician who held the position of Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Families in the Generalitat de Catalunya until Spain sacked the whole Catalan government on 27 October 2017. She is known for her syndicalist career in the major Spanish trade union, Unión General de Trabajadores. Since March 2018 she was remanded in custody, without bail, by order of the Supreme Court of Spain, accused of sedition and rebellion as being responsible for devoting several thousand public schools to the 1 October 2017 referendum as polling stations.
Carme Forcadell
Sentenced for their role in the 2017 push to separate from Spain, eight politicians and activists have been granted the low category ‘semi-freedom’ status by the Catalan government.
