WASHINGTON — VOA’s Persian Service has expressed shock and grief at the suicide of a former colleague, Kianoosh Sanjari, who jumped to his death from a building in Tehran on Wednesday in protest against Iran’s authoritarian rulers.
Sanjari, a 42-year-old Iranian, was a former journalist and rights activist who worked at VOA Persian’s Washington bureau from 2009 to 2013 before returning to Iran in 2016 to care for his parents.
Sanjari had been jailed in Iran for his activism before and after his work in the United States. He spoke publicly about how he suffered psychological harm from solitary confinement and other ill treatment by Iranian authorities.
VOA Persian Service Director Leili Soltani wrote on Instagram that she and her staff are “heartbroken and deeply affected” by the loss of their former colleague.
“This devastating loss has been extremely difficult and shocking for everyone at VOA Persian, especially for those of us who worked closely with him,” Soltani wrote. “Kianoosh was only 17 when he was arrested, tortured and kept in solitary confinement. Though he is gone, his passion for freedom and human rights will live on.”
VOA Director Michael Abramowitz said he also was “deeply saddened” to learn of Sanjari’s death.
“Kianoosh, a former VOA journalist & a man who loved his country, suffered imprisonment & faced severe repression from the Iranian regime that ultimately led to his passing. He will be deeply missed,” Abramowitz wrote in a post on the X platform.
Responding to a VOA query, a State Department spokesperson said the Biden administration is “saddened” by Sanjari’s death and expresses condolences to his family.
“His and other recent youth suicides in Iran indicate growing despondence on the part of Iranian youth with a regime that suppresses their most basic human rights,” the spokesperson said in an email.
“We again call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners detained in Iran without just cause. The Iranian regime’s campaign to silence critics and human rights activists must stop,” the U.S. official said.
Sanjari had posted a message on his X account early Wednesday saying he would end his life in protest of the “dictatorship” of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei if judicial authorities did not announce the release of four political prisoners by 7 p.m. that day. No such announcement came.
At 7:20 p.m. Wednesday, he made two more posts on his X account, one of them a photograph taken from the terrace of Tehran’s Charsou shopping mall complex showing a bridge and the street beneath him. In the other, Sanjari wrote that he would end his life after the post, in which he also said, “No one should be imprisoned for expressing their opinions. Protest is the right of every Iranian citizen.”
Video posted to social media shortly after Sanjari’s final social media posts showed the body of a man lying on a sidewalk beside the Charsou mall, as onlookers gathered and emergency service personnel arrived at the scene. Informed sources told VOA Persian that the body was that of Sanjari, who had jumped from the terrace to his death.
Iranian state news agency IRNA cited Judge Mohammad Shahriari, head of Tehran’s Criminal Affairs Prosecutor’s Office, as saying he has opened a “suspicious death” case related to Sanjari.
Before visiting the mall, sources told VOA Persian, Sanjari had been at his parents’ Tehran home, where several friends had visited him and believed they had dissuaded him from taking his life.
Sanjari’s death as an act of antigovernment protest has drawn expressions of sadness from other rights activists and journalists around the world.
“The Islamic Republic is undoubtedly responsible for this tragic death,” wrote Roya Boroumand, executive director of Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a U.S.-based group dedicated to the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran. In a statement sent to VOA, Boroumand said Sanjari was politically active after his release from prison, “campaigning for others languishing in prison and also against the death penalty.”
“He always held Iran dear in his heart and did not let the brutality of the Islamic Republic and strains of his personal life stop him from fighting against repression. By ending his life and the message he left behind, he reminded us of this bitter reality and condemned his oppressors and those who claim to be ruling on behalf of God,” Boroumand wrote.
VOA’s Persian Service contributed to this report.
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