Seriously-ill Kurdish prisoner in Iran denied proper medical care: Amnesty

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – A seriously-ill Kurdish woman serving a life sentence in an Iranian prison has been denied medical care, Amnesty International reported on Friday.

Zeynab Jalalian, a 35-year-old Kurdish prisoner, serving a life sentence in Iran’s Khoy prison in the West Azerbaijan Province, has been denied adequate medical care while in jail.

Jalalian has been refusing medications since March 2017 in protest of the Iranian authorities’ refusal to allow her to receive proper care.

According to a statement by Amnesty, the Iranian prison has sent “false claims to the UN that she is in perfect health and receives medical care.”

The report also pointed to the “tampering [of] her medical records making it appear that she undergoes weekly check-ups.”
Jalalian currently suffers from a severe case of pterygium, a wing-shaped growth of tissue that starts on the white of the eye and spreads across the cornea.

The 35-year-old Kurdish prisoner is on the verge of losing her eyesight as Iranian authorities continue to deny her the specialized medical care she needs, Amnesty reported.

Since 2014, doctors have recommended surgery to heal her condition, but prison officials have refused to send her to a hospital outside the facility and have only given her eye drops.

Jalalian also suffers from heart, intestinal, and kidney problems that have caused her serious pain, the Amnesty report stated.

According to her lawyer, her requests to be transferred to a hospital have either been denied or accepted “on condition she makes videotaped confessions.”

Jalalian was arrested in March 2008 for her social and political work related to women and Kurdish rights in Iran.

After initially receiving a death sentence in March 2009, the Kurdish activist was handed life imprisonment in December 2011.