by Bethany Rielly

A HUMAN rights group is calling on the British labour and trade union movement to challenge Iran’s “crackdown” on women rights activists. 

The call, made ahead of International Women’s Day by the Committee for Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights (Codir), also demands the release of Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. 

Ms Sotoudeh is serving a 38-year sentence after taking on a case for women’s rights campaigns as they challenged Iranian laws making the hijab mandatory in 2018. 

The world-renowned human rights lawyer was briefly released from prison in November after contracting Covid-19, but has since been readmitted to the notorious Qarchak prison. 

She is one of a growing number of women’s rights defenders locked up in Iranian jails. In December two activists, Hoda Amid and Najmeh Vahedi, were sentenced to 15 years in total. 

In a statement human rights campaign Codir urged that “this dire situation cannot continue.

“We appeal, on International Women’s Day 2021, to the labour and trade union movement to campaign with renewed vigour for an end to gender-based oppression in Iran, for cessation of the violent suppression of the women’s movement and for the release of all political prisoners with immediate effect,” it said. 

It comes as British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s five-year sentence is due to end on Sunday. Her husband Richard said last week he was “sceptical” that she will be released, saying he had had no official confirmation from British or Iranian authorities. 

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in March 2016 at a Tehran airport while travelling back to Britain and convicted of espionage and plotting to overthrow the Iranian regime — claims she denies.