A Mother’s ‘Letter of Suffering’: Nargess Mohammadi’s Mother Protests

Ezzat Bakhshi has published a “Letter of Suffering” protesting the pressures imposed on her daughter Nargess Mohammadi. She has specifically pointed to Mohammadi’s deprivation of telephone conversations with her children, calling it a “cruel and vindictive” act.

The Human Rights Defenders Center of Iran published a statement from Ezzat Bakhshi. In this statement, released on Monday, October 7, it states: “What prompted me to write this letter of suffering is my desperation in speaking with Kiana and Ali, who ask me about their mother’s whereabouts, and I can do nothing.”

Nargess Mohammadi, Vice President of the Human Rights Defenders Center of Iran, has been imprisoned in Evin Prison since April 2015 on charges of “propaganda against the system” and activities in the Step by Step campaign to abolish the death penalty. She has been sentenced to 16 years in prison and is deprived of visits and telephone contact with her two children.

Kiana and Ali live with their father Taghi Rahmani outside Iran.

Lack of Access to Medication

Ezzat Bakhshi wrote in her “Letter of Suffering”: “During this long period of imprisonment, Nargess has only been released for three days and has undergone three major surgeries, but was returned to prison even before completing her recovery period in the hospital. She has been denied access to doctors for a long time and even lacks access to her own medications. For nearly three months she has been suffering from toothache but is not being sent for treatment.”

Ms. Bakhshi further raised the question: “From which religion, creed, or principle does depriving a mother of hearing her children’s voices, when she longs to see them, stem from?”

In her view, “In human history, few rulers have brought such shame upon themselves as to deprive young children of their mother to such an extent that they forget and lose memory of their mother’s face and voice.”

Further in the statement, the behavior of the judiciary toward Nargess Mohammadi is described as “cruel, malicious, and vindictive.”

A Mother’s Hope

Ms. Bakhshi warned in her statement: “This period of suffering for us and the rule of these rulers will one day come to an end, and history will be a witness. But as a mother and a woman who has suffered in this land, I say that human conscience will not be easily comforted by these pains.”

Ezzat Bakhshi has previously written several letters to Iranian judicial and government officials, including President Hassan Rouhani, regarding this matter.

Her letter to Rouhani followed a prolonged hunger strike by Nargess Mohammadi. Mohammadi went on hunger strike in protest of being deprived of telephone contact with her children, but her action did not result in a change in the behavior of the Islamic Republic’s judicial officials.

Source: DW