Narges Mohammadi: I am beginning another year of my cruel imprisonment

The spokesperson for the Defenders' Center, in her fifth year of imprisonment, has narrated the situation of women imprisoned in Zanjan Prison. She writes that judicial authorities have also deprived her of receiving books and that she spends her time listening to the stories of her fellow prisoners.

The vice president and spokesperson of the Center for Human Rights Defenders has described the situation of imprisoned women and her own conditions in a letter on the occasion of the anniversary of her imprisonment. She writes that she is beginning another year of her cruel imprisonment among the victims of poverty, corruption, and patriarchal laws: “… I am serving my sentence among my sisters, those for whose rights I have campaigned, and alongside people whose poverty and hunger compelled me to protest.”

Narges Mohammadi says that due to the orders of the judicial and security authorities, they do not even give her a book: "I was wishing that they would give me one of the books on my birthday, but what a pity! My gift this year is to sit on my knees, look each other in the eye, and hear the voices of the colorless victims whose fate has brought pain to my bones and left me naked in the arena of suffering and love, so that I can understand what destruction stealing a salt puff for a hungry child and prostitution for not sleeping on the street at night brings, and not having the right to divorce leads a woman to the gallows and the stoning pit."

She has been in prison since May 5, 2015, serving a 16-year sentence. Six years of this sentence were issued for propaganda against the regime and another 10 years for her activity in the “Step by Step to Abolish the Death Penalty” campaign. She, who was serving her sentence in Evin Prison, was forcibly and physically transferred to Zanjan Prison in January 2019 by the Evin prison governor. The reason for this transfer was Ms. Mohammadi and several other prisoners’ sit-in in solidarity with the victims of the floods and earthquakes and the November protests at the Evin Prison office. Evin authorities have banned the sit-ins from meeting with them and have deprived them of the right to call their relatives.

In her recent letter, Ms. Mohammadi writes that witnessing the suffering, misery, and death of imprisoned women has been a rebirth for her: "I begin another year of my cruel imprisonment within these hard and cold four walls, heartbroken but happy and steadfast. This life is hard but reassuring, so that I believe that the effort to achieve justice, freedom, and human rights is worth losing everything I have, even not hearing the childish voices of Ali and Kiana."

Narges Mohammadi, a mother of two, suffers from pulmonary embolism and muscular paralysis and has been denied phone contact with her children for several months. Her children joined their father in France after their mother was imprisoned. Taqi Rahmani, a political activist who spent 14 years in the Islamic Republic’s prisons, has not seen his wife for eight years.

Two weeks before this letter, Ms. Mohammadi's lawyer had announced that her client had been denied parole and that she was being held alongside dangerous prisoners, contrary to the principle of segregation of crimes, and that she had been threatened with death by one of them.

Ms. Ozra Bazargan, Narges Mohammadi's mother, previously wrote in a letter to the head of the judiciary that the treatment of her daughter is cruel and inhumane. Instead of responding to the family's concerns about the substandard conditions in Zanjan Prison, the authorities are threatening them: "My daughter has contracted numerous diseases in solitary confinement and has undergone three major surgeries in the last five years of her imprisonment, and has only been on leave once, for three days, in these years."

After Narges Mohammadi was transferred to Zanjan Prison, security officials opened two new cases against her, citing events during her imprisonment. The Zanjan Prosecutor's Office cites "publishing political statements, holding educational classes, and protest sit-ins in the women's ward" as evidence for the new charges. She has been asked to write a letter of repentance in order to be released from prison alive.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi has accused the Ministry of Intelligence of plotting to kill Narges Mohammadi.

Source: DW