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Abtin, who was detained for security reasons, won the 2021 PEN / Barbey Freedom to Write Award.
Tehran, Iran Iranian poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin, who was detained on security charges, has died in a hospital in Tehran after being detained by COVID-19 while in prison.
A 48-year-old boy was transferred to a hospital from The length of the house in mid-December and was hospitalized a week before his death on Saturday and tried to help him recover from a severe coronavirus infection.
Freedom groups say the government wasted no time in providing medical care as it began showing signs of the disease last month.
Together letter Published Friday, PEN America and 18 other non-governmental organizations called on Prime Minister Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to provide better medical care, and to refrain from inviting political prisoners to serve in prisons where conditions in Iranian prisons are deteriorating.
Abtin, a board member of the Iranian Writers’ Association, was summoned to serve his sentence in September 2020 along with fellow members Reza Khandan Mahabadi and Keyvan Bajan.
PEN America in October presented one of the three authors with the 2021 PEN / Barbey Freedom to Write Award.
In a statement after Abtin’s death, the Tehran prison administration said the author was serving a five-year prison sentence for “false propaganda against national security”.
The court said he had been in hospital for 35 days, during which time law officials decided to release him temporarily, but doctors were unable to rescue him.
Tens of thousands of Abtin’s posts flooded Twitter and other social media a few hours after his death.
#Iran: RSF learned with sadness the death of #Baktash_Abtine. The author is #new he was unjustly sentenced to six years in prison and was hospitalized, ill #Covid19 Disease & deprivation of appropriate care. RSF blames government officials for his death. pic.twitter.com/zNZ2l0rw1v
– RSF (@RSF_inter) January 8, 2022
One accompanying photo shows his parents chained to a hospital bed reading in a blue prison uniform. Another is shown in a coma, with breathing tubes and other devices that keep him alive.
COVID-19 deaths and hospitals in Iran have dropped sharply in recent weeks following a global vaccination campaign, but officials warn that the Omicron-type threat is growing. Iranian prisons have also been hit by epidemics during the epidemic.
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