Coventry man on 42nd day of hunger strike
Vahid Beheshti is urging the government to put a branch of the Iranian military on the terrorist list.
Last updated 6th Apr 2023
A British-Iranian man from Coventry is on his 42nd day of hunger strike outside the UK Foreign Office and has vowed to continue.
Vahid Beheshti has lost 12 kilograms and is getting “weaker and weaker” according to his wife, Coventry city councillor Mattie Heaven.
The activist and journalist is calling on the government to proscribe a branch of the Iranian military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as a terrorist group.
In a post on Twitter yesterday (5 April), he said he will remain on hunger strike until the UK government “does the right thing” and places the group on the list.
“I will go nowhere, I will stay here, until we achieve this together,” he said in a video posted to thousands of followers.
His wife Cllr Heaven has been to London to show her support for him, including on their wedding anniversary on 1 April.
She said: “It’s extremely difficult to see my husband getting weaker and weaker every day.”
Cllr Heaven was “surprised and shocked” at first when he decided to do it, but said she fully supports his actions.
In one of her Twitter posts she said: “I am very proud of my husband standing up for freedom and democracy.”
Beheshti has written three open letters to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak since starting his hunger strike and is calling for an urgent meeting with him.
His most recent letter refers to a statement on escalating threats from Iran to the UK in a speech by the head of MI5 last year.
He also mentions the Iran International TV station moving to America from London in February after threats were made to its journalists.
It means that British people’s safety can no longer be guaranteed, he said.
The letter sent on Monday (3 April) calls for action before it is “too late.”
During his protest Beheshti has been visited by MPs, former prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband, and actor Omid Djalili.
But the government is reportedly split on whether to proscribe the group, which is already sanctioned by the Foreign Office.
Minister of State for Security, Tom Tugenhat, met with Vahid last week and reportedly told him the government’s position is to proscribe the group though he couldn’t say when this would happen.
Tugenhat told Parliament in February that the Iranian regime had been behind 15 credible threats to kidnap or kill people in the UK in just over a year.
Alicia Kearns, chair of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs select Committee, has praised Beheshti as showing “immense strength” and publicly backed proscription.
But in an interview with the BBC she admitted there would be a “big cost” to the move.
“It would send a very loud and strong message,” she said.
“But there is also a big cost as it could be considered by the Iranians as a hostile act and we would have to close our embassy in Iran.”
“The Americans have been asking us not to proscribe because they don’t want us to shut our embassy in Tehran which is essentially operating now as their de facto embassy,” she added.
In the same BBC article Beheshti said: “The UK government needs to proscribe the IRGC. The only language Iran understands is strength and pressure.”