Watchdog

At least 10 women detainees have started a hunger strike inside Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

One of the prisoners, Mahbubeh Karami, told her family in a telephone conversation on July 6 that the women are staging the hunger strike to protest their continued detention without charge.

Karami, who is a member of the women's movement Campaign for Equality, was on her way to work on June 24 when police officers detained her while she was riding a bus in Tehran.

Karami’s lawyer tells RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that he has had been unable to meet his client and does not have access to her case.

The reasons behind the detentions are unknown.

Prior to Karami’s arrest, Iranian police briefly detained nine other women’s rights activists who were about to take part in a peaceful seminar to mark the day of Solidarity of Iranian Women.

The seminar, organized by the Campaign for Equality, was due to take place in Rahe Abrisham Gallery in Tehran but security forces prevented the ceremony by arresting the women outside the building and forcing the gallery owner to shut the doors.

Alesya Yasyuk, an activist of the opposition Belarusian Social Democratic Party, complained to RFE/RL's Belarus Service on July 7 that the previous day she was subject to a brutal and humiliating treatment by police in Minsk.

Yasyuk, who lives in Barysau, a city some 60 kilometers east of the Belarusian capital, was arrested in Minsk on June 6 by police officers who found in her bag several stickers calling for a boycott of parliamentary elections due in September.

Yasyuk was taken to a police station where she was stripped naked by a female police officer, while two male officers filmed with a video camera. Yasyuk demanded that the cameramen leave the room, but no one heeded her. On the contrary, the police officers reportedly threatened to take her to a prison and put her into a cell with vagrants.

Yasyuk spent six hours at the police station and was released without any formal paperwork. She told RFE/RL that she was in a state of shock and called what happened to her at the police station a case of "torture."

Opposition activist Mikola Statkevich told RFE/RL that this year he was subjected several times to the same procedure following his detention during a protest in Minsk.

"I have an impression that the authorities came to the conclusion that the previous level of repression was insufficient and they decided to raise it," Statkevich said. "Therefore, they try to add psychological torture. So they will continue to strip people naked."