Virtual narrative of torture and repression in Iranian prisons coinciding with "Islamic Republic Day"
On the anniversary of the Islamic Republic's referendum, a group of Iranian civil society and human rights activists held a program titled "One Hundred Stories, One Narrative" on the topic of "More than Four Decades of Resistance and Legal Action in the Prisons of the Islamic Republic."
In this program, which was held online on Thursday evening, April 12 (Iranian time) , reports, testimonies, memories, letters, and projects of those who have been in the prisons of the Islamic Republic for more than four decades were narrated.
On the other hand , coinciding with the day designated as "Islamic Republic Day" in the official calendar of the Islamic Republic, Iranian users on social media also used the hashtag " #100_narratives_one_narrative " to express the repression of opponents and critics of the Islamic Republic in Iranian prisons.
Akram referred to the repressions of the 1960s: "In the 1960s, there were a lot of arrests and the government seemed to be a little more cautious. Many people were arrested at work. At the time of the arrests (especially leftists), they announced that they were being arrested for drug trafficking. People still had hope in the government and many believed these lies."
Nazli Kamuri believes that "hearing the pain and suffering of political prisoners is not easy. Trauma creates trauma. Let's devise a strategy for ourselves that allows us to sympathize with the pain and trauma from a distance, but not let the violence of the trauma become internalized. The narrative of suffering has the potential to become a liberating force."
And Azam Bahrami recalled the torture of Niloufar Bayani, one of the detainees in the environmental case: "They repeatedly pulled up my sleeve and threatened to inject me with air or paralytic injections. The religious interrogator, who introduced himself as Taeb's representative, told me to choose between 70 lashes in two days or 50 lashes in one day. But nothing shocked me like seeing the image of Dr. Seyyed Emami's body in the morgue."
Source: Voice of America
