Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Baneh, Kurdistan Province, Iran
About Roya Toloui
- Roya Toloui (born May 22, 1966 in Baneh, Kurdistan Province, Iran) is a prominent Kurdish-Iranian journalist, human rights activist and feminist, currently residing in the US.
- She was born in Baneh in western Iran.
- She received her high school diploma at Baneh and her PhD in Medical laboratory from University of Mashad.
- She was the editor-in-chief of Rasan (Rising up), a Kurdish monthly magazine about women's issues.
- Five issues of the magazine were published in Sanandaj in spring and summer of 2005 until it was closed down in the summer of 2005 by the Iranian judiciary.
- She is the founder of the Association of the Kurdish Women Supporting Peace in Kurdistan.
- She is also a member of the Kurdish PEN. Due to her outspoken criticism of authorities as well as defense of the rights of Kurdish and Iranian women, she was tried in a Revolutionary Court in April 2005 and was accused of endangering national security.Following demonstrations in Kurdish inhabited areas of western Iran, she was arrested on 2 August 2005, and held in prison for 66 days until freed on bail in October 2005.
- Her case of imprisonment was highlighted in the International PEN's Day of the Imprisoned Writer on November 2005.
- After her release, she fled Iran for Turkey and finally she sought refuge in the United States in April 2006.
- In 2006, she received the Oxfam Novib/PEN Award.
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