In Tehran’s Evin prison, where Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi is imprisoned, most political prisoners have often sung revolutionary songs together since the beginning of the “Woman Lives Freedom” movement, says former “state hostage” Fariba Adelkhah.
The protest that arose in September 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, a young 22-year-old Kurd, three days after his arrest for failing to comply with the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code, “has transformed Iranian society, but also its prisons.” , believes the French-Iranian researcher in an interview with AFP.
Large-scale demonstrations against Iranian political and religious leaders took place for months and were subjected to bloody repression. According to NGOs, hundreds of protesters were killed and thousands more arrested.
In the women’s district of Evin, human rights activists, environmentalists, trade unionists, political opponents, representatives of religious minorities… often with different positions, are imprisoned. But “this thing unites us,” says Fariba Adelkhah, 64, an anthropologist who specializes in Iran.
She herself was arrested on June 5, 2019 at Tehran Airport, where she was waiting for her companion Roland Marchal, who had come to meet her. Nicely dressed agents, “in their Sunday best,” then “very respectfully” invited her to follow them, she says. A few hours later his first interrogation begins, with his head “turned towards the wall”.
There will be many more to come in which he will never be struck, she assures. “Interrogators hitting you to get answers is very common among men, but I never heard anything about women during my detention.”
For her part, Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi spoke out about sexual violence against women in prison.
“Psychological humiliation”
“However, the absence of physical violence does not prevent constant psychological humiliation,” Fariba Adelkhah hastens to add.
She was ultimately sentenced to six years in prison, five for “colluding with foreigners” and one for “propaganda against the Islamic Republic.”
Ms. Adelkhah was pardoned with an electronic bracelet last February after more than three and a half years in prison or house arrest. Eight months after this decision, Tehran will return his passport, allowing him to return to France.
Roland Marchal, a researcher specializing in Africa, was arrested on the same day as her and released in March 2020 as part of a prisoner exchange between Tehran and Paris.
“I still cannot understand what I was accused of,” sighs the French-Iranian with a warm smile, despite a 50-day hunger strike from which she emerged bloodless, despite the years she spent “behind the wall”. , couldn’t fade.
Paris has used the term “state hostages” several times to describe his case and that of other French citizens detained by Tehran.
In her work in Iran, she was obliged to respect “three red lines”: “the revolution”, “Islam” and “the status of the supreme leader”, three extremely sensitive questions that could have brought her accusations, says the researcher Appeasement policy towards Tehran, which she rejects.
But “the regime criminalizes actions that are not criminal,” the sixty-year-old notes. In the end, we all become enemies in his eyes.”
“How beautiful you are”
“Woman Lives Freedom,” which got Tehran into deep trouble, extended beyond her fellow prisoners, she says. In Evin, prisoners are bareheaded among themselves, but must cover themselves if a man enters their quarters or if they have to go to the hospital. After the movement began, when men broke out, almost “no one wore the veil anymore,” she remembers.
On Wednesday evening, the family of 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi assured that despite heart and lung problems, she was deprived of urgent care because she refused to cover her head.
In a message posted on the official Nobel website on Tuesday, Ms. Mohammadi specifically described the compulsory hijab as “the main source of control and oppression in society, aimed at maintaining and sustaining an authoritarian religious government.”
Narges Mohammadi was arrested 13 times, sentenced five times to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes, and has been imprisoned again since 2021. She has turned prison into a “space of struggle, of protest par excellence,” in which she “is heard more than…”. when she is outside,” observes Fariba Adelkhah.
The researcher was still in Iran at the beginning of October when her former fellow prisoner was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She remembers the “smiles” on the street, a certain “lightness” in the faces.
“When women who don’t wear a veil now meet on the street, which was previously unthinkable, they say to each other: ‘But how beautiful you are!’” she says happily.
Massive “Woman Life Freedom” demonstrations on a daily basis have become very rare, but “the Islamic Republic is forced to give in on many things,” she says. On the streets of Iran, as well as in its prisons.