DW writes about it.

"We don't know which of us will be arrested next.

The mood is terrible," journalists from Iran admit these days in private conversations with foreign colleagues.

No one is ready to repeat it in front of a camera or a microphone.

The maximum that Iranians are ready for today is posts on social networks.

For posting on social networks in Iran, you can end up in prison

But it is also dangerous to post - as the story of Iranian journalist

Milad Allavi proves once again.

He was arrested on January 1.

The reason is still unknown, according to his brother on Twitter.

A few weeks earlier, the police searched the journalist's apartment and confiscated his smartphone and computer.

Alawi reported on the protests in Iran and the victims of their merciless suppression by the law enforcement agencies.

Mass demonstrations began in September after the death of 22-year-old Kurdish girl

Mahsa Amini

, who was detained by the customs police for allegedly wearing the hijab "incorrectly".

Protest actions became the largest since the revolution of 1979 - they covered 160 cities in all provinces of the country.

According to human rights activists, at least 470 protesters have already been killed, and about 18,000 have been arrested.

And now the repressive apparatus is taking revenge on those who spoke about the protests or sympathized with the victims.

According to the observers of the organization "Human Rights in Iran" (Iran Human Rights), 62 journalists are currently behind bars in Iran.

Milad Alawi, who worked for Iran's well-known daily newspaper Shargh, is currently in the same prison cell as Iranian sociologist

Saeed Madani.

As the same Shargh reported at the end of December, the scientist was repeatedly visited in prison by high-ranking officials of one of the Iranian ministries.

"They wanted to get recommendations from him on how to extinguish the wave of discontent in the country," lawyer Madani told the publication in an interview.

Stop the violence and think about preserving the rights of the demonstrators, the newspaper quoted the answer of the sociologist.

As a result, the 61-year-old scientist was sentenced to 9 years in prison for "propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran," as written in the verdict.

The distribution of his books was banned even earlier.

In his books, Madani called on Iranian society to show solidarity and be ready to stand up for their beliefs.

Now he and a number of his colleagues are being persecuted for this.

For example, university professor

Farshid Naruzi

.

On January 2, he announced on Instagram that he had been fired from the university.

The reason: he refused to give the police the names of students who boycotted classes in solidarity with the protesters.

Iranian lawyers behind bars

Several lawyers who tried to defend the rights of the protestors were also in prison,

Syed Deghan told DW.

The human rights defender and lawyer has been in Canada for several months and is trying to create a human rights network that would help the affected Iranians from abroad.

"We document the systematic violations of human rights in Iran, record the names of judges who pass unjust sentences," says Deghan.

"We are also in contact with the independent commission established by the UN Human Rights Council to combat impunity in the suppression of protests in Iran."

The main goal of this commission is to stop the execution of death sentences in the country.

As Iran Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported on January 3, more than half of executions in Iran are carried out in secret.

According to HRANA, 565 people were executed in the country last year, two of them for participating in the current mass protests.

protests Two more were executed at the beginning of January. Now 26 more demonstrators are facing the death penalty: during the show trials, 14 of them have already been sentenced to the death penalty, and the charge against the remaining 15 - for example, "war against God" - will probably also be classified by the judges on this same article.

"War Against God"

Here is an example of the writer and artist

Mehdi Bahman

.

After an interview with Israeli television, he was sentenced to death by a court in Tehran.

Bahman, who has been calling for inter-religious dialogue for many years, in an interview spoke in favor of improving relations between Iran and Israel, despite the fact that the authorities in Tehran consider the Israelis their staunch enemies and have already threatened to destroy the state of Israel altogether.

In such cases, the Iranian judiciary issues sentences based on espionage charges.

So it was with Bachman.

In October 2022, Bachman was arrested and sentenced to death without even having a lawyer.

The death penalty also threatens two journalists -

Nilufar Hamedi

and

Elae Mohammadi

- they were the first to write about the death of Mahsa Amini in September.

The Iranian authorities accused them of treason and working for the US intelligence services.

And football player

Amir Reza Nasr Azadani

was sentenced to 26 years in prison for his participation in anti-government protests.

Azadani was accused of complicity in the murder of three policemen, as well as participation in a conspiracy to violate public security and membership in illegal gangs.

In mid-December, IranWire reported that Iranian authorities had added Azadani to the list of those sentenced to death.

In this regard, the International Federation of Professional Footballers' Associations protested to the Iranian authorities, calling on them to cancel this punishment for the athlete.