Iranian artist Atena Faraghdani, above, has gone on trial in Iran for penning a cartoon criticising draft laws which would restrict access to birth control.
The image by Faraghdani depicted MPs casting votes on the proposed legislation as animals.
According to this report, Faraghdani, 28, faces charges of spreading propaganda, insulting MPs, and insulting the supreme leader.
The laws would end decades of family planning in Iran, outlawing vasectomies and restricting contraception.
Faraghdani was first arrested in August 2014, when her home was raided by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and taken to Gharchak prison.
She was released in December but was re-arrested again in January after posting a video online in which she alleged that she had been beaten by prison guards and interrogated for up to nine hours a day.
Three weeks after being re-arrested, Faraghdaniwent on hunger strike to protest against conditions at the prison. She was taken to hospital in late February after suffering a heart attack and briefly losing consciousness.
She has since been held in solitary confinement in Tehran’s Evin Prison.
Raha Bahreini, an Iran researcher for Amnesty International said:
We are very concerned that Atena has even been put on trial. She is a prisoner of conscience and she has been held solely because of her opinions and for exercising the right to free expression.
From our point of view, she must be released immediately and unconditionally.
If convicted of all charges, Faraghdani could face up to two years’ imprisonment and lashes.
The draft laws mocked by Farghadani’s cartoon would outlaw vasectomies for men and voluntary sterilisation for women, and restrict women’s access to birth control.
The legislation was widely criticised when it was announced in March. Amnesty said that if approved by parliament, it would set women’s rights in Iran back by decades.
Women’s rights groups warned that restricting access to birth control risked forcing women into unsafe abortions.
Faraghdani’s cartoon has been shared on Twitter and Facebook since her arrest using the hashtag #freeatena, and a Facebook page set up to document her case has attracted messaged of support from around the world.
Responding to the charges laid against her in an open letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Faraghdani said:
What you call an ‘insult to representatives of the parliament by means of cartoons’ I consider to be an artistic expression of the home of our nation (parliament), which our nation does not deserve!
An Amnesty petition calling for Faraghdani’s release garnered 33,000 signatures and was presented at the Iranian embassy in London on Monday.