Watchdog

Jailed Kurdish journalist Kamal Sharifi is on a hunger strike to protest the poor prison conditions and the violation of his rights, RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports.

His sister, Mahnaz Sharifi, told Radio Farda on July 6 that Sharifi began the strike in late May in the Minab prison in southeastern Iran.

In 2009, Sharifi was convicted by a Revolutionary Court in Saghez, located in Kurdistan Province, of cooperation with the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan and "sedition against God."

He was sentenced to 30 years in prison in internal exile and a ban on prison visits during his sentence.

Mahnaz Sharifi said Kamal is being kept with dangerous criminals and is the only political activist in that prison ward.

She said her brother has requested a brief meeting with the judge in his case, but this request has been denied.

Kamal Sharifi's sister added that due to the harsh sentence issued against her brother his family has not visited him since his arrest three years ago.

"My father and brother requested that the judge who issued the sentence let them visit Kamal in order to talk him out of the hunger strike, but the judge said there was no need to do so, let him die!" Mahnaz Sharifi said.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) representative on freedom of the media has urged Tajik authorities to release detained BBC reporter Urunboy Usmonov.

Dunja Mijatovic said she was still awaiting an official response on Usmonov's case.

Mijatovic on June 16 sent a letter to Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi in which she called the arrest of Usmonov an attempt to censor reporting on sensitive issues.

Usmonov, who has worked for the BBC Central Asian Service for 10 years, was arrested on June 13 for alleged membership in a radical organization.