execution – Official Website of Nasrin Parvaz

I was tortured for eight years in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison – the UK must not turn its back on survivors like me

I can’t stop thinking about my fellow prisoners. People held in Evin have already suffered so much, and now this. For those of us who’ve been imprisoned, moments like this bring all the painful memories flooding back. All I can see are the faces of friends lost to executions.

For all of us – those still inside Iran or living in exile – these attacks are nothing short of psychological torture. Families wait in agony for news. Survivors like me relive their worst nightmares.

It’s been more than thirty years since I was imprisoned, but I remember it like it happened yesterday. I was held for eight years, threatened with sexual violence. And tortured. My ‘crime’? Speaking out against human rights abuses, state executions and women’s inequality. For this they called me a spy.

When I fled for my life, I left everything behind – my family, my friends, my home. Arriving in the UK, I had nothing. I felt so lost and alone. But I was lucky. I escaped. I’ve been able to heal, to rebuild, to find my voice again.

Now, I use my voice through writing, art, and activism. These are powerful tools for survivors like me. Sharing my story means I can raise awareness of the horrors still happening in Iran. Being able to do this has helped give my life meaning after everything I lost.

This year, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, I stood with Freedom from Torture to unveil billboards across London, amplifying survivors’ voices. As conflict and repression escalate around the world, we’re calling for renewed public support to end torture.

My words now stand tall in Shadwell, East London: “I spoke out against executions in my country. I was tortured for it.” I am one of the lucky ones. I can stand here today and speak proudly and freely. But my heart aches for those still silenced, those being tortured for the simple act of standing up for what’s right.

The torturers tried to take my voice. But through therapy, writing and art, I reclaimed it. And now, our words are displayed for all to see. People need to understand why survivors like me are targeted: for standing up for basic rights, for falling in love, for dreaming of equality or just wanting to exist peacefully.

We’re asking the British public to stand with us – to welcome us as neighbours, as survivors, as people rebuilding our lives in safety. At this critical moment, when the UK Government threatens to weaken vital protections for survivors, we urge the country to stand firm: the absolute ban on torture must be upheld, with no exceptions. I believe the British people will choose compassion over cruelty. We need to remember that silence only helps the torturers, so together we must be louder.

________________

Nasrin Parvaz became a civil rights activist when the Islamic regime took power in 1979. She was arrested in 1982, tortured and imprisoned for eight years. Parvaz is the author of One Woman’s Struggle in Iran: A Prison Memoir and The Secret Letters from X to A.

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

Source: https://www.lbc.co.uk/opinion/views/tortured-iran-evin-prison-uk-survivors/

I was a political prisoner in Iran — Tehran will use this moment to execute dissidents

In November 1982, Nasrin Parvaz planned to meet a friend and fellow activist in the Iranian capital, Tehran. She was shocked when her friend showed up at the meeting with an interrogator.

“I didn’t know he’d been arrested the day before,” Ms Parvaz, now 67 and based in Britain, told The i Paper. “He couldn’t take the torture, and named me. I was arrested.”

Ms Parvaz had been involved in demonstrations against the Iranian regime that had come to power following the revolution in 1979, bringing with it a fundamentalist and repressive interpretation of Shia Islam.

“The regime introduced misogynistic laws,” she said. “They said women had to cover their heads. Women did not have the right to divorce. Women had to have their husband’s permission to leave the country. Custody of children was the husband’s right. The law permitted men to kill their daughters and wives, and they went free.”

Ms Parvaz was taken to an interrogation centre for six months. “I was tortured because they wanted my contacts, and I wouldn’t give it to them,” she said. “My feet were lashed, so much so that I was paralysed for three weeks. The guards had to take me to the loo, and I couldn’t shower.”

She was transferred to Evin prison in Tehran, a notorious site holding thousands of prisoners, including hundreds of political dissidents, human rights activists, journalists and dual nationals. The prison, sitting on a hilltop surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fences, would become her home for most of the next seven years.

“Evin has a reputation of being a site of torture and oppression,” Nader Hashemi, director of the Alwaleed Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund A Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, told The i Paper. “Every major political dissident that has been arrested by the Islamic Republic of Iran has found themselves at Evin.”

Ms Parvaz was shown to a room meant to sleep five prisoners – instead, it housed 80 women and two children.

A prisoner walks in the Evin prison yard in Tehran, Iran October 17, 2022. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY — An inmate in the Evin prison yard in Tehran in 2022 (Photo: Majid Asgaripour/Wana)

“I was beaten, but not like when I was at the interrogation centre,” she said. “I was put in solitary confinement, sometimes for months.”

She remembers becoming very ill in Evin with an unbearable pain in her stomach.

“I was at the point of dying,” she said. “I couldn’t eat anything and lost a dramatic amount of weight. They didn’t want to give me any treatment or medication, and said they would take me to hospital if I wrote my first confession – that I had made a mistake to struggle against the regime. I said I would not.”

My Torturers Tried to Silence Me, But Art Gave Me Back My Voice

More than thirty years ago, I suffered terribly at the hands of the Iranian government. I was imprisoned for eight years, and they tried to silence me with torture. All I’d done was take to the streets to demand my freedom and liberty from an oppressive and authoritarian regime.

The torturers tried to take my voice away. And therapy, writing and art played a vital role in helping me to express myself again. When I first came to the UK, after leaving my friends and family behind, I felt lost. But I was given support by organisations like Freedom from Torture that had a transformative impact on my life. I joined Write to Life, a creative writing group for survivors of torture. Through writing I regained my voice.

For many years writing was a means of escape for me. But art opened my eyes and I realised that it could be a way of fighting back, as well as a means of change. It can provide a counterpoint to what those in power and their media are showing to people. Art can change people’s minds. That’s why art is seen as a threat to power. Look how many artists are imprisoned in Iran from rappers, like Toomaj Salehi, to film makers and other artists.

Sharing my story through writing, and now through my art, is such a powerful way to tell difficult stories. It can give such an important insight into the very painful realities faced by those of us who’ve experienced torture. Today, I’m a member of Survivors Speak OUT (the UK’s torture survivor-led activist network) and I can raise awareness of the horrors happening in Iran. Being able to do this has helped give my life meaning since I had to leave my home.

I’ve listened and watched in terror at the violence that has swept across my country, since the death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini at the hands of the abusive “morality police” in September 2022. Although media interest is disappearing, the wave of protests sparked by Amini’s death haven’t died away, they’ve just changed. Instead of thousands taking to the streets, young people gather to dance, and women risk their lives and liberty just to sing.

Now, things like street dancing, singing, paintings and music are such an important way for people in Iran to protest. Many forms of art – like songs, digital art, videos, graffiti – have been created during the Woman, Life, Freedom revolution. Each of them emphasises protest actions, resistance, and different forms of activities against the regime’s repressive system. My own work explores personal and political journeys based on both my life and collective experiences that I have witnessed and heard about.

At first, I only wanted to show what had happened in prison, but now I have so many other ideas, I don’t have enough time to paint them all. My work explores the vulnerabilities of humans, of issues like refugee and women’s rights. I try and capture this in my work, regardless of the media I use, through drawing, painting, sculpture or print making.

When I first got to the UK, my head was full of the scenes of prison. All I could think about were the faces of my friends who’d been executed, the noise of the firing squad and the crying of hungry children in the prison, the torture that we experienced, and the face of my father when I told him I’d been sentenced to death. Therapy helped me to slowly clear these images from my head, and over time, I was able to feel safe and strong again.

Still so many people in Iran have been imprisoned, they’ve been tortured and are languishing in prisons. I was lucky, I was able to get out. I’ve had the chance to recover and rebuild my life here in the UK. But my heart aches for the women who are still being subjected to the same kind of torture that I was. It’s horrific and depressing that this is still happening.

Iran is one of the top countries of origin of Freedom from Torture’s clients. There are many people like me who have fled their homes and reached the UK hoping just to live in safety. The therapists, lawyers and welfare advisors offer a lifeline to people who crucially need compassion, support and rehabilitation to recover.

Those in power in Iran now will do anything to try and suppress any opposition. Ex-prisoners, families of those still imprisoned, or anyone remotely politically active are being threatened and intimidated by security forces. It’s just more abuse carried out by an authoritarian regime that will stop at nothing to eradicate any form of defiance.

We need to continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the women and young people demanding the basic rights that we, in other parts of the world, take for granted and enjoy every single day. I’m calling on the international community and media to keep shining a spotlight on my country to demand that the regime stop using torture immediately.

Nasrin Parvaz became a civil rights activist when the Islamic regime took power in 1979. She was arrested in 1982, tortured and imprisoned for eight years. Parvaz is the author of One Woman’s Struggle in Iran: A Prison Memoir and The Secret Letters from X to A.

Article originally appeared on Huckmag.

You could lift the noose from the necks of these 11 young men by signing this petition

During the 2017 uprising in Iran a participant named Asghar Haron Alrashidi was killed by a bullet fired by a government guard.

His family complained against the government militias. Soon after a number of his friends were arrested. They were forced to falsely confess to the use of arms in what was a peaceful demonstration under torture by the hands of Islamic Guards. The regime used these confessions against them to condemn them to execution.

These five men are sentenced to ten executions for the crime of protesting against the regime – yes, each of them is sentenced to two executions each. Their death sentence has been issued by the Supreme Court.

One thing that the Iranian regime does not like is international publicity that shows them for what they are. Please sign this petition to stop the regime from carrying out these executions.

Hadi Kiani was born in 1990 and is married.

Abass Mohammadi was born in 1991 and has two children.

Mohammad Bastami was born in 1992 and is married.

Majid Nazari Kondori was born in 1994.

Mehdi Salehi Ghaleh Shahrokhi was born in 1983 and has a seven year old daughter.

During the last three years there have been bursts of peaceful demonstrations in Iran. What people want is their basic rights: freedom of expression, jobs and unemployment benefits, and the end of execution. The regime shot demonstrators and arrested thousands of them before killing them in prison. Please sign this petition to stop the execution of these young men.

Just to say a couple of sentences about myself: I was arrested three years after the Islamic regime took power in the early 80s for the same reasons that these young men revolting against the regime. I was tortured and sentenced to execution, but after a year and half my late father was able to change my fate. I was released from prison after eight years. Now I’m a refugee living in the UK.

Sign the petition here.

One Woman’s Struggle in Iran: A Prison Memoir

Award-Winner in the Women’s Issues category of the 2019 International Book
Awards

In 1979, Nasrin Parvaz returned from England, where she had been studying, and became a member of a socialist party in Ira fighting for a non-Islamic state in which woman had the same rights as men. Three years later, at the age of 23, she was betrayed by a comrade and arrested by the regime’s secret police.

Nasrin spent the next eight years in Iran’s prison system. She as systematically tortured, threatened with execution, starved and forced to live in appalling, horribly overcrowded conditions. One Woman’s Struggle is both an account of what happened to her during those eight years and evidence that her spirit was never broken. Nasrin’s memoir is a story of friendship and mutual support, of how women drew strength from one another and found endless small ways to show kindness and even find tiny specks of joy.

This book, however, is not simply about the prison system in Iran. It is about oppression – and especially the oppression of woman – wherever it takes place. It deserves to stand with Primo Levi’s If This Is A Man as an indictment of cruelty, brutality and the dehumanizing of fellow human beings.

Catriona Troth, author of Gift of the Raven and Ghost Town.

https://www.victorinapress.com/product/one-womans-struggle-in-iran-a-prison-memoir/