Iran Document: The Women Who are Political Prisoners (Sadr)

On Wednesday, lawyer and activist Shadi Sadr spoke about the situation of the women who are political prisoners in Iran:

Exactly two years ago today, the largest protesting demonstration of the Iranian people after the 1979 revolution took place between Enghelab or Revolution square and Azadi or Freedom square. People started with revolution and moved towards freedom, although in the streets surrounding freedom square, a large number of demonstrators were shot from a Basij military base and never made it to freedom.

Barren, incomplete and defective freedom is precisely the situation of all of us who hoped to reach democracy by participating in the post election protests and demonstrations. It appeared that freedom was within our reach but, a few steps before it, we were stopped. Serious crushing of the dissent in the streets and silencing the civil society using the tools of detention, torture and even execution of political and civil activists was one of the major reasons for our movement’s unfruitfulness.

After two years and while popular revolutions take over Middle East and North Africa, today few people remember the brave role played by the Iranian women who were at the forefronts of the protests and demonstrations post election. Perhaps in the minds of some, a vague image still remains of Neda Agha Soltan, the young woman who was shot in her heart and died on the street in front of the bewildered eyes of the world. But hardly anyone remembers thousands of others who were arrested, not in the peak of popular dissent, but in the days and months following it and in their homes and places of work.

It can be said that the political prisoners in Iran are deprived of many rights that are given to them in accordance to the international laws, as well as those afforded to them under domestic laws of Iran. They are daily victims of human rights abuse. In the last two years, in spite of all the limitations, many letters by political prisoners have reached the outside world that speak of the usage of all forms of torture against political prisoners. Further, the conditions faced by the female political prisoners which is what I intend to speak about today, is far more dangerous.

Although no detailed statistic exists of the number of female political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, our information regarding their makeup is relatively accurate. Some female prisoners, such as the leaders of the Baha’i faith or Muslims who have converted to Christianity, are solely imprisoned due to their faith. Presently 30 Baha’i ladies are imprisoned in various Iranian cities. Fariba Kamal Abadi and Mahvash Sabet of the seven leaders of the Baha’i community are amongst them. Followers of the Baha’i faith as well as any faith that is not Shi’a Islam, the official religion of the country, have been continuously pursued and persecuted in the thirty two years since the Islamist regime came to power.

Another group of political prisoners are the supporters or followers of the opposition groups. After suffering one of the most brutal crushing of the political prisoners in the 20th century during the 80’s, they are now under pressure both themselves and their families. Shabnam Madadzadeh is one of such prisoners who is sentenced to 5 years’ imprisonment for supporting the MEK [the insurgent group Mujahedin-e-Khalq].

Attorneys, journalists, women’s rights activists, and civil rights activists are another group of female political prisoners. Although this group always had a few individuals in prison within the last ten years, its numbers increased exponentially in the last two years. Also, the sentences issued for this group of activists used to be short term imprisonment, presently, some of the individuals in this group such as Bahareh Hedayat and Nasrin Sotoudeh, have been sentenced to 12 and 11 years’ imprisonment. Young women’s rights activists are arrested en mass in both Tehran and other cities so as to prevent the movement from continuing its peaceful resistance.

Fatemeh Masjedi, member of the One Million signatures Campaign to Change Discriminating Laws is imprisoned in Qom, the most religious city in Iran under such conditions that deprive her of even the most basic sanitary care. Maryam Bahreman, women’s rights activist, is now imprisoned in the solitary cell of the intelligence office of Shiraz for having attended a Conference at CSW [Commission on the Status of Women] in New York City.

Last group of female political prisoners are ordinary citizens who were arrested in post election unrest, they don’t have any political backing or social capital. Most of them are unknown and for that reason, are targets of more serious forms of crushing and torture or limitations in prison.

Aside from these groups that are serving their prison terms packed like sardines in rooms with capacity of less than two square meters for each prisoner, without access to a breather, telephone or other prison accommodations, there is another group of female civil and political activists who were arrested in the post election events and later released with heavy bail due to international pressure. Although they have had imprisonment sentences issued for them in the last two years, they are still outside of the prison waiting to be called at any moment to serve their six, seven, or eight years’ imprisonment. In effect they are hostages that for many reasons, including the confiscation of the property put down as bail that is often homes of their parents or relatives, have no choice but to present themselves to the authorities once their names are called. 

Shiva Nazar Ahari, the 27-year-old human rights activist who was arrested twice in the last two years and was in effect in detention for close to a year and is now released on bail of 700 thousand dollars is an example of such people whose six years’ prison sentence has been upheld and she is now waiting every day to be called so that she can spend four of the best years of her life in prison.

In my case, after I was released in July of 2009 with a bail of 250 thousand dollars, the revolutionary court sentenced me to six years and 74 lashes in absentia and while I was outside of the country for having organized a gathering in defense of women’s rights.

And indeed, there is another group; political prisoners who are no longer with us, our dead:

In 9 May of 2010, Shirin Alam Houli, a young Kurdish girl charged with membership in a Kurdish political group was executed in prison without the knowledge of her family or attorney.  On January 29, 2011, the judicial authorities executed Zahra Bahrami, an Iranian-Dutch citizen who was arrested during the Ashura demonstrations of 2009. She was not given a fair trial. Two weeks ago, Haleh Sahabi, peace activist who was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in the post election trials, was released from prison on leave to attend her father’s funeral but on the day of the funeral, due to the attack of the security forces, her heart stopped and thus she was killed.

But what awaits those in line to go to prison and what will come to those already in the prisons?

Sexual discrimination occurs in Iran in a wide spectrum from the laws to the actions, encompassing all the aspects of women’s lives in Iran. Under such a discriminating regime, naturally women face various forms of sexual discrimination in prison. One of the most important of such discriminations are sexual harassments that encompasses a wide range of actions, from forcing female prisoner to wear a chador and insulting and using sexual terms in reference to them that have a general and systematic nature to threatening to rape and even raping of the prisoner that is not a general act but has been documented more often to be a mere accident.

Recently, the female political prisoners at Evin, including the two Baha’i leaders, announced in a letter to the general populace that their souls were repeatedly raped by the interrogators. They wrote: “unfortunately, since everything in the country is based on feminine and masculine boundaries, what transpired in some interrogation rooms and to female prisoners was putting pressure on them using their sexuality. It must be an insult to this regime that in the privacy of the interrogation rooms, male interrogators discuss sexual matters with female prisoners and accuse and libel them or force them to bear false witness against themselves or others in detail. Indeed in support of our claim we have no one other than God and the silent walls of those interrogation rooms to bring as witness. All we can say is that tens of pages of interrogations extracted from female prisoners in the discussed time period can be a witness to the matter.

In general one of the methods the interrogators used on some female detainees was to use violent verbal sexual abuse so as to break their resistance by discussing sexual matters. From that respect, we must say that our souls were repeatedly raped in those chambers. Discussing what transpired in detail can only be possible in a private assembly and in the presence of the judicial authorities.”[i]

Female prisoners sent in exile or for a short period of time to Rajai Shahr prison of Karaj and Gharchak prison of Varamin, both prisons in Tehran province adding them to the notorious Evin prison of Tehran, reported increased violence and raping of female political prisoners by ordinary, non political prisoners. In March of this year, a group of Family members of the female political prisoners of Rajai Shahr, wrote in a letter to the head of the judiciary. They said: “another matter that has caused worry amongst the family members of the political prisoners is the presence of trouble making prisoners in this prison. At times they have set on killing other prisoner in prison. Immoral acts can be found aplenty at this prison to the point that in a few cases, younger prisoners were first raped by various means by the trouble making prisoners and then murdered by them. Presently, an individual is being kept adjacent to the room of the political prisoners who has murdered three prisoners after raping them. The prison authorities did and do nothing to provide security for the lives of the prisoners.

The scope of this danger are so real that political prisoners face difficulty bathing and are often worried about the attacks of dangerous prisoners. This is so serious that in order to bathe, a prisoner must have two others watching behind bathroom doors to prevent an attack.”[ii]

Furthermore, in May of this year, an Iranian human rights group reported that in one of the wards of Gharchak prison in Varamin where Political prisoners are held too, in a quarrel amongst the ordinary prisoners, a few of those prisoners attacked a 21 year old girl and raped under the watchful eyes of the warden who did nothing to stop the action from taking place.[iii]

Although in Rajai Shahr and Gharchak prison, rape and sexual abuse have not occurred by the hands of the wardens or interrogators or other responsible authorities, but based on the principal of due diligence,[iv] the judicial official are directly responsible for preventing violence against women and sexual violence that occurs by hands of non-governmental officials.

In truth, until an independent non-governmental group or UN inspectors are able to visit with the female prisoners without the involvement of an intermediate and investigate the occurrence of sexual crimes happening to women who are currently held in prison, the aforementioned reports cannot be trusted as established facts. However, some of our research in Justice for Iran corroborates the continuous occurrence of sexual torture against women in the last 32 years. After interviewing a significant number of female prisoners who were imprisoned within various time periods and for different beliefs and political activities, we can certainly say that various forms of sexual torture, from the most serious form of it or rape to the more general forms of it took place in the Islamic republic and was used as a systematic tool to silence and inactivate the female civil and political activists. Much in the same way that in Libya today, mass raping of women is used as a solution for crushing and silencing the protesters or the way the female detainees in Egypt were given a virginity test in order to demonstrate to them what befalls those who protest in Tahrir square![v]

We know that when the body and soul of a woman is violated not only the life and activities of that woman is forever changed, but thousands of women outside of prison stop their civil activity or are forced by their family to do so due to the fear of being raped. The long term effect of such suppression on any movement, and in particular that of the Iranians to achieve freedom and democracy, is clear. For this reason, it is of the utmost importance to investigate all the cases of sexual abuse and sexual torture of Iranian female prisoners, not only to help their victims obtain justice and peace, but also to prevent women, an important part of the movement, from becoming inactive out of fear of sexual abuse.

The United Nations Human Rights Council will appoint a person as Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran by the end of this week. Our efforts should be to put sexual abuse in prisons as well as sexual torture amongst the priorities in his list. Also, names of individuals who were instrumental, in words or action, in violating the rights of the political prisoners and prisoners of conscience must be added to the list of Iranian officials recently barred from entry into the EU member states and have their assets seized by the European Union for their role in violating human rights.

Taking a serious and fruitful measure in order to stop violation of human rights, including various forms of sexual torture and violence against political prisoners as the most severe form of violation of human rights, is a necessary step towards releasing some pressure from the popular movement of the Iranian people. We must start now, tomorrow is too late!