Kurdish activist fled Iran into Italy nightmare

After fleeing Iran and making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, Kurdish activist Maysoon Majidi did not expect to be jailed in Italy for people smuggling.

But the day after arriving on a boat last December, she was arrested and held for 10 months -- a victim, her supporters say, of a migration clampdown by Giorgia Meloni's government.

"I tried to say who I was, that I am a political refugee, that I have done nothing wrong," the 28-year-old told AFP by telephone from Calabria, in southern Italy, where she was recently released.

Speaking in Farsi through a translator, she added: "None of us would want to leave our own country and face all these dangers to get here.

"I had to leave Iran not just to stay alive, but also to be able to continue my work as an activist."

Majidi arrived in Calabria on December 31, 2023, one of almost 80 migrants on a boat from Turkey -- among the last of nearly 158,000 people who landed on Italy's shores that year.

The next day, she was arrested for aiding illegal immigration, a crime that risks six to 16 years in prison.

She spent the next 10 months in prison, held on the basis of testimonies from two fellow migrants that were later withdrawn.

Amnesty International is among those who have taken up her cause, joining a local campaign group and the mayor of Riace, Domenico Lucano.

Lucano, now a member of the European Parliament, was himself convicted for his help for refugees. He made Majidi an honorary citizen.

She was finally released on October 22 after others on board -- including the captain, currently facing prosecution -- testified in her favour.

She is awaiting a dismissal of her case on November 27, after which she hopes to join her brother in Germany, and continue her life.

- A long exile -

Born in 1996 in the Iranian province of Kurdistan, Majidi studied theatre and sociology at university.

She wrote several articles under a pseudonym denouncing misogyny in society, and made a short film with Kurds who risk their lives transporting goods in the mountains between Iran and Iraq.

The NGO Hana, which documents human rights abuses in Majidi's region, confirmed she was one of its active members.

"I was always under observation when I was at university," she recalled.

"In 2019, they arrested me and then released me, but I knew that they were following me and that they released me to have access to my contacts."

She and her brother went into exile.

Taking refuge in Irbil, in the autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, she became a journalist and helped organise demonstrations in the wake of the 2022 death in Iranian police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd.

New threats pushed her to flee to Turkey, from where she managed to raise the money needed to get a boat to Italy.

- 'What am I doing here?' -

During Majidi's time in prison, she staged several hunger strikes against her detention, and to ask for an interpreter.

Parisa Nazari, an Iranian feminist activist living in Italy, supported her during that time.

"I could feel her ribs as I held her in my arms. She kept asking me: 'What am I doing here?'" Nazari recalled at a screening in Rome last month of Majidi's film.

For NGOs and groups backing her, Majidi is a victim of a clampdown on irregular migration by Meloni's hard-right government.

Meloni, whose far-right Brothers of Italy party won 2022 national elections, has vowed to stop the boat arrivals, including taking a tough line on the traffickers who organise crossings from North Africa.

Riccardo Noury, spokesman for Amnesty International Italia, told AFP that "too often, there is an impression that people on board migrant boats are arrested to show that the fight against so-called illegal immigration works."

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