The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) has received information that detained lawyer and human rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh has ended her 49-day hunger strike. The prominent human rights activist is serving a six-year jail sentence in Tehran’s Evin prison following her arrest in September 2010 on charges of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security.

On 4 December 2012, Nasrin Sotoudeh ended her hunger strike when State authorities agreed to lift the travel ban imposed on her 13-year-old daughter. She began the hunger strike on 17 October in protest against the ban and limits placed on family visits. She remains in ill health and over the course of her hunger strike was taken to the prison infirmary on several occasions.

Earlier that same day the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay had called on Iranian authorities to free Nasrin Sotoudeh and lift the travel ban against her family. The media have reported on her ill health while in detention over recent days and a parliamentary committee was allegedly due to visit Evin prison to assess Nasrin Sotoudeh’s situation.

Nasrin Sotoudeh, over the course of her practice as a lawyer, has defended journalists and rights activists, including Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi. She was awarded the European Union’s Sakharov prize for human rights and freedom of thought last month jointly with filmmaker Jafar Panahi who has been under house arrest since December 2010.

She was arrested in September 2010 on charges of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security and was imprisoned initially in solitary confinement in Evin Prison. In January 2011, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison, and banned from practicing law and from leaving the country for 20 years. An appeals court later reduced her prison sentence to six years, and her ban from working as a lawyer to ten years.

The GCHR expresses serious concern for the physical and psychological safety of Nasrin Sotoudeh and believes that her arrest and continued detention are directly related to her legitimate and peaceful work in defence of human rights and the practising of her profession.

The GCHR urges the authorities in Iran to:

1. Grant Nasrin Sotoudeh immediate and unfettered access to the medical treatment which she requires;
2. Immediately and unconditionally release human rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh and drop all charges against her;
3. Guarantee the physical and psychological integrity and security of Nasrin Sotoudeh while she remains in detention;
4. Guarantee in all circumstances that all human rights defenders in Iran are able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions including judicial harassment. 

The GCHR respectfully reminds you that the United Nations Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, adopted by consensus by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1998, recognises the legitimacy of the activities of human rights defenders, their right to freedom of association and to carry out their activities without fear of reprisals. We would particularly draw your attention to to Article 11: “Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to the lawful exercise of his or her occupation or profession (…),” and to Article 12 (2): “The State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others, against any violence, threat, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration.”