Political prisoners are scattered throughout Iran. Each province has its own representatives of the religious hierarchy and jails over which they have complete authority. And, of course, each jail holds its share of the disaffected. All can rival Evin and Gohardasht in their degradation. The level of struggle inside can be gauged by just how vile the prison conditions are and where one finds the most prisons. Kurdistan is well supplied, and not even the smallest district is complete without its own prison.
Just as each locality has its own jail, each had its own massacre in 1988-89. All local representatives of Khomeini were instructed to deal with their opposition. Often, even those oppositionists who had served their sentences and been released were re-arrested, re-tried and executed.
This was the reaction of a frightened regime defeated in war, trying to reassert its hold, made more desperate and brutal by the thought that things were slipping away from it. The war that Khomeini had called ‘God’s greatest blessing’ became his curse. The defeat at the hands of Iraq made it essential to step up the war against its own people if it was not to lose that too. ‘The Front’ became the gallows in Iran, not minefields in Iraq.
In Kurdistan, the massacre was carried out in the most blatant and barbaric ways. Public gallows were erected in town squares. The corpses of those executed were kept on display for days, sometimes weeks, to warn the population of the rewards for ‘subversion’. If this was what went on in the streets, one can only guess at the slaughter dished out behind prison walls.
A sort of race developed between officials in the different regions as to who could deal with dissenters most speedily and callously. In places such as Hamedan, Rasht in the north, and Rezaieh in Azerbaijan, more than 90 per cent of political prisoners were executed.
Mass graves were discovered in Karaj, near Tehran, on 24 October 1988 – 725 bodies were unearthed. Others were found in Tehran, in Rudbar and Menjil, both in the Caspian region. It will never be known how many prisoners were murdered at this time, but the figure usually cited is between 8,000 and 10,000.
CHAPTER 19
CAT AND MOUSE
Our sisters and brothers had queued for the gallows while we had queued for the lash. In the aftermath of the massacre we queued for interviews and interrogation.
Two or three times a week, blindfolded, each of us would stand before a panel as they fired a stream of questions and demands at us.
‘Are you ready to condemn the opposition grouplets? Will you sign a petition to this effect? Are you prepared to be interviewed on television to do this publicly? Are you prepared to co-operate with prison officials? Will you give information on prison opposition? Are you prepared to go to a Jihad labour block? Will you participate in a mass demonstration of prisoners in front of the UN headquarters in Tehran, in support of the Islamic Republic and against the so-called Human Rights Commission inquiry into torture and massacres? If you are released, are you prepared to co-operate with Vavak?’
These barrages were designed to wear us down, to force us to submit; they kept alive the climate of fear and suspicion in the wake of the massacres. I took time and care in answering these questions to avoid implicating myself, or giving the regime an iota of help.
‘Brother, I have never been a member of any group, so I have never supported their programmes in the first place. Signing your petition would imply that I have had associations with them. I’ve always denied that this is so. The same is true for being interviewed. What can I say about these groups? I don’t know much about them… Brother, while in prison I’ve kept myself to myself. I haven’t mixed in prison politics, so I have no information to share with you… As to demonstrating, brother, as you can see’ – I looked down at my body and shrugged expressively – ‘I can hardly stand, let alone demonstrate at the UN… I can’t co-operate with state security. I have no expertise or experience here. You’re welcome to my expertise where I have it. I can teach for you if you want!’
This final – and only – offer to my interrogators provoked an upwardly extended middle finger from one of my interrogators. ‘We’re not letting you near a classroom again, you bastard!’
In the aftermath of these interrogations, the blocks were constantly reshuffled so there was little chance to build new links. Prisoners were regrouped in line with the answers each gave. As was the case before the massacre, it prevented us from re-establishing firm relations with one another. The threat of another massacre was kept in front of our noses by constant interrogations and our vulnerability was emphasised.
One post-interview journey for me went a little further than from one block to the next. In early 1990 I was put on the prison bus to Evin – an old acquaintance that I was not anxious to renew. I managed to avoid the Jihad forced labour blocks because of my ill-health. Many prisoners didn’t and became slave labour.
Work would start at 8am and end around 5pm. Men were put to work in the carpentry shop making crates for guns and ammunition; though the war was over, the regime clearly had its sights set on the next. Others made light switches in the electrical shop, and in the machine shop general repairs were handled. Lastly, there was a Jihad brigade who, with grim irony, were given the job of building more cells and blocks. All worked to a quota. If you didn’t fulfil it, it was recorded and your prospects of release receded.
Most members of the Jihad block, about 400, had been in prison since their teens, some earlier, and had no experience of the work they were put to. No training was given, no protection provided. Accidents were common especially in the machine shop. Men lost fingers, even hands, with horrifying frequency.
Abbas, a Mojahedin sympathiser had been in jail for seven years since the age of 14. Now 21, he had managed to survive torture and massacre, and retained his spirit. Although unprepared to compromise with the regime, he was strongly focused on getting out and rebuilding his life. Volunteering for the Jihad block was seen by many prisoners as a way of accelerating release.
Abbas worked in the carpentry shop, on the circular machine saw, feeding in the uncut wood. One day, hurrying to meet his quota, he severed the four fingers of his right hand. He stood there, in shock, gaping at his fingers lying in the bloody sawdust.
Recovering with a bony stump where once his hand had been knocked the fight out of Abbas in a way the threats and attacks of the regime failed to. Although he put on a brave face, those close to him could see the deep pain and sorrow within. To have survived so much of the intentional brutality of the regime only to be robbed of the use of his hand by a dumb machine demoralised him profoundly. He continued, one-handed, to work in the Jihad block and was released about six months later.
The Human Rights Commission inquiries were giving Khomeini problems with international relations. The regime was visibly rattled, and wanted to bully prisoners into telling the commission how tenderly the regime catered for every need.
In the spring of 1990, a large number of prisoners were bussed under armed guard to the commission’s temporary office in Tehran. These reluctant demonstrators were then forced to chant their condemnation of the commission’s critical reports on the abuses that they knew they would return to later that day.
I had dodged the demonstration draft. But I had not got out of the whole thing. Soon after this prisoners’ forced picket, I was taken, blindfolded, to the interrogation block. I was seated in a wooden cubicle containing a school chair with a wooden extension on which to write. I was hunched in this child-sized desk for maybe an hour, staring at a blank wall from under my blindfold. Someone entered silently and a sheaf of paper was slipped over my arm onto the writing surface.
A protracted question and answer session followed; one where no words were exchanged between me and my captors. My interrogator would write down a question. He would then leave and give me between 30 and 45 minutes to compose my answer. Then he would return, take my answer sheet and write down the next question. In this way, a short series of questions and answers managed to drag out all day.
&
nbsp; The interrogators obviously wanted to be precise; to leave me opportunities to be sloppy and drop myself in it, and have it all in black and white for the record. Aware of this, I would sit sucking my pen for a good half-hour before committing a word to paper. I wanted to be sure my answers were watertight. The session proceeded like a chess game, with the interrogator and I each trying to lure the other into a strategic mistake; me to get off the hook, him to jam me firmly on it.
And so it started: ‘There are some questions you need to answer,’ said my first question sheet. ‘Your release hinges on the co-operation you give us. And it must be completely confidential. Can you write in English?’
‘Not very well.’ Half-an-hour to write that.
‘Do your best, anyway. We want you to write a confidential letter to Dr Galindo Pohl, the Human Rights Commission’s chief investigator. In it you must condemn the opposition grouplets. We want you to blame the grouplets for the damage they have caused you. Tell him that they have destroyed your life, and the lives of your family. You should also explain how well you have been treated in prison by the Islamic security guards, from the time of your capture to the present.’
‘Brother,’ I wrote, ‘if there is one thing you drummed into us during the past few years it is that a prisoner should not get involved in politics. Writing this letter is definitely a political act. How do you reconcile this with your insistence that I stay out of politics?’
My opponent frowned over this answer, and then agitatedly scribbled, ‘Who told you writing a letter to Galindo Pohl is political activity? We are asking you to complain against those who have wrecked your life.’
‘Condemning the opposition is political. And once I have written this letter to the commission it will be a public document. By publicly condemning these grouplets, don’t I put mine and my family’s lives in danger, if they are terrorists, as you say?’
Since there was no realistic way of forcing me to write their letter, and I didn’t want to expose myself as openly hostile to the regime, we had to play cat and mouse with each other.
‘No,’ my interrogator promised, ‘we will give you full protection.’ The cheese in the trap.
‘But these grouplets have assassinated some of the Islamic regime’s leading officials. If you can’t protect them, how can you protect me and my family?’ The mouse is staying well inside his hole, thank you.
‘You think about it,’ offered the fat Islamic cat. ‘Do you want to get out of here, or stay and rot? I’ll leave you the pen and paper. You have two hours to write the letter. This is your last chance.’
The time passed. When he returned, there was nothing written in English. But he had another of my notes in Persian. ‘Self-preservation is the individual’s prime instinct. The lessons I have learned in prison, to abstain from all political activity, prevent me from writing any letter supporting or condemning any party.’
He took my answer sheet away. Then he returned, and slapped me hard on the back of my head, like a bullying school master. I rocked forward in my classroom chair with the force of the blow. He spoke for the first time. ‘You dirty animal! Get lost,’ this being the signal for the guards to return me to my cell.
CHAPTER 20
WOMEN’S STRUGGLE AGAINST THE ISLAMIC REGIME
Women have long faced an uphill struggle for recognition as full human beings in Iran. They have shared the prisons with us, and carried their own burden around with them everywhere: the black, voluminous chador that symbolises their imprisonment by the misogynistic doctrine of the mullahs. Throughout the century, the women of Iran have trod the long and painful road to liberation. Unfortunately, it has not been a straight one.
My grandparents’ generation overthrew the old absolutist order. One of the principal gains of their constitutional revolution between 1905 and 1907 was that it weakened the stranglehold of the religious hierarchy over the educational and judicial system. Before this time, education was solely the province of the mullahs. Justice, such as it was, was down to the whim of the presiding mullah. The result of the overturning of this system was that women were, for the first time, recognised as citizens, rather than chattel of the Kajar dynasty’s lowly subjects. As Iran dragged itself painfully into the 20th century, women were offered the possibility – and all too often it was to remain no more than that – of transforming themselves from property to active participants in the moulding of our country.
This was the grey tyranny that millions of women thought they were finally casting off with the 1979 revolution. In reality, we entered a chapter of our history that reversed the limited formal gains of the constitutional revolution of some 70 years earlier. Iran’s feudal past hung round the necks of its women like a dead weight.
After the establishment of the Islamic regime, hundreds of thousands of women were thrown out of offices and factories throughout the country. Tens of thousands were flogged in the streets for not veiling themselves. Throughout the country, Islamic courts sentenced hundreds of women accused of adultery to death by stoning, public hanging or being hurled off a cliff. Iran was thrown back a century in its social attitudes. The 20th century, so far, has been a long detour between religious absolutism and… religious absolutism.
Today, if you travel through some of the more backward provinces of Iran you will see many women, all wearing the anonymous chador which proclaims them a non-person. But you will not see one alone. In the metropolitan centres such as Tehran a woman may walk alone – but if she walks in the company of another man, it has to be with one who is seen as having the authority to accompany her – a husband or a brother. On any excursion, documents can be demanded to prove such a link. A woman virgin up to the age of 50 cannot be married without the permission of her male guardian.
A woman can’t leave the country without the authority of a male member of the family. She can’t book a hotel room or anything else in her own name. She can only do it in lieu of a husband or father. A woman is at most the bearer of someone else’s authority. She has none of her own. We have almost complete sexual apartheid in Iran.
But, try as they might, the mullahs can’t get the genie back in the bottle. There can be no going back to the last century. The whole development of the intervening period has made women aware, and has inspired them to fight. Paradoxically, even those women who swarmed in a seething black mass of chador in support of Khomeini came into conflict with his grand design. In combining in support of the Islamic ‘revolution’, they subconsciously revolted against its intent to crush and consign them to the home life of their great-grandmothers.
The regime’s attack on women could not have passed without meeting resistance from women who have studied in the classrooms and universities, and who have been educated in struggle en masse, in the workplaces and on the streets. Women flocked to those parties demanding the overthrow of the Islamic regime, and its replacement by a democratic form of state, as soon as the feudalistic implications of Khomeini’s aims became apparent.
This process of radicalisation was met with the arrest of tens of thousands of women. They were imprisoned, interrogated and tortured. Many were shot. The policy of sexual apartheid against women meant, too, that women in prison suffered more than their male counterparts.
Women prisoners had to wear the smothering black veil, thick leggings and trousers. In stifling, sweaty prison conditions, this sealed each woman within their own personal hell in the wider hell of the jail. Those who refused to conform to this dress code were moved from the political blocks and placed in cells reserved for prostitutes.
Mothers were compelled to look after their children in the bleak cells and corridors of the prisons. A verdict against one woman would mean jail for all her young children. Even if the father was not himself imprisoned, and had no political connections to besmirch his character in the eyes of the regime, he would not be allowed to care for the children, so tender was the concern for the Islamic regime for the role of motherhood.
On the rare occasio
n that there was no one outside to care for the prisoner’s children, the interrogators would threaten to throw the children out if their mother did not co-operate. The children became the eyes and legs for their mothers who were in darkness under a blindfold and unable to walk as a result of tortures. They also tended their mothers as best as they were able. These were enormous responsibilities for a child of maybe three or four.
In 1983, 20 cells in Evin’s 209 alone had 26 children distributed between them, some four or five years old when they had the doors bolted behind them, others who were born in prison. As a result of torture, many women had lost the ability to give their children milk. This gave the torturers another lever to use against them: they would be told that if they wanted milk for their babies, they would have to give information in return.
The children’s concept of the adult male was drawn entirely from what they saw of the guards and interrogators. They had no idea of the outside world. They had never seen a flower, the moon or the stars – they could not envisage a world outside their grey concrete box. Their mothers would draw them pictures in the dirt on the floor to try and convey to them some vision of a bigger, brighter and happier world. But it must have seemed like just some incredible fairy story to young minds whose only experience was of grey walls, ogres in khaki, and victimised, wounded women cloaked in black.
Young children in the jails were interrogated. As a result, they didn’t play cowboys and Indians or doctors and nurses, like other children. The main prison game was prisoners and interrogators. I was told by a woman comrade about just one example from Evin in 1983. A four-year-old boy, Yavar, got 12 of his playmates to line up, facing the wall, while he went down the line, shouting at each in turn in his high-pitched voice, ‘Where is your daddy?’
A State of Fear Page 21
