Author: Nasrin Parvaz
Woman Life Freedom, a Poem
Shot, handcuffed to the flag rod.
He asked for water
the guards held a cup of water
out of reach and said, ‘Take it.’
His mother came at dawn
with a bowl of water.
She was shot.
His sister came
with a bowl of water.
She was shot.
His cousin came
with a bowl of water.
She was shot.
His neighbour came
with a bowl of water.
She was shot.
His lover came at dusk
together with women.
Each holding a bowl of water.
Frightened
the guards ran away.
Nasrin Parvaz
Published in the water themed anthology “Ourselves in Rivers and Oceans” by Wee Sparrow poetry press. This poem was inspired by the killing of Khodanor Lajehie by the same method by the Islamic Regime of Iran in 2022.
I Was Sentenced to Death for Fighting Iran’s Oppressive Regime
Source: Grazia magazine
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.
It’s time for Britain to show it really cares about Iranians
I feel more hope for Iran than at any time in the past 40 years — and more fear too. The regime assumed that brute force would crush the protests that have multiplied since the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September, but instead of backing down, people from all walks of life have joined Iranian women in the streets.
As the regime’s hold on the country slips, its barbarism has increased. Tens of thousands have been detained. Hundreds have been killed, including at least 60 children. After the gruesome public hanging of Majidreza Rahnavard this month, scores more demonstrators could face imminent execution.
The families of those who have disappeared into Iran’s prisons fear the worst. Many know first-hand how the regime treats its prisoners. When I was arrested for protesting against Iran’s gender apartheid in 1982, I was tortured so badly I was left paralysed for three weeks. Eventually, I escaped Iran and found sanctuary in the UK. Thousands of those I was imprisoned with were not so lucky.
In the face of such brutality, the solidarity shown by Iranians is humbling. In the city of Javanrud, bakeries are distributing free bread to protesters. Across western Iran, an underground network has developed, smuggling blood and medical supplies to wounded protesters. In the diaspora, hundreds of thousands have flooded the streets in cities from London to Los Angeles, showing their support.
Last month, the British government told the UN that “the UK stands with the people of Iran”. But those who have been forced to flee for their lives are yet to witness this solidarity in action. Newly released government statistics show Iranians to be among the top three nationalities seeking asylum in Britain. Like me, many have experienced torture; Iranians are also among the nationalities most frequently referred for treatment to Freedom from Torture, the charity that helped me when I arrived in this country. But rather than being welcomed with kindness, they are threatened with instant deportation for daring to ask for asylum.
At the same time, the Iranian embassy in London remains open and regime acolytes continue to operate in the UK. Last month, The Times revealed that over £100,000 was paid by the UK to Ayatollah Khamenei’s personal representative through the taxpayer-funded coronavirus furlough scheme.
If the government is serious about supporting Iran’s uprising, it should crack down on the regime’s activities in Britain and send Iranian diplomats home. But most importantly it should treat Iranians fleeing for their lives with compassion and support them to rebuild their lives in this country.
Nasrin Parvaz is an Iranian women’s rights activist and torture survivor
Source: The Times
I was tortured for 8 years in an Iran prison
It’s the smell of blood I remember most vividly.
When I heard about the recent fire at Iran’s Evin Prison, I was taken back to the time I was imprisoned there for eight years during the 1980s for opposing the Iranian regime’s gender apartheid.
During that time, I was tortured so badly I was temporarily paralysed, and developed a brain tumour that was not removed until 2012.
As protests continue across the country, and the authorities crack down on those fighting for their rights, it seems little has changed for detainees.
But when I look at what’s happening now, I feel a mixture of anger and pride, fear and hope.
Saman Yasin held his head in his hands as the judge read out his death sentence.
The 27-year-old Kurdish rapper, whose popular songs touched on topics of unemployment and oppression, was sentenced last week by an Islamic Revolutionary Court, with no family or lawyers present.
His crime? Moharebeh – enmity against God.
Saman is one of the latest victims of the Iranian regime’s bloodthirsty efforts to crush the protests that have swept the country since the death of 22-year old Mahsa Amini after she was arrested by Iran’s feared morality police.
Like so many young Iranians, Yasin was abducted from his home in early October, after posting his support for the protesters to his more than 200,000 social media followers. Human rights groups claim he was physically and psychologically tortured in custody.
The rapper’s politicised lyrics may have placed him in the regime’s firing line, but he is far from the only cultural icon targeted in the recent crackdown.
Fellow rapper Toomaj Salehi is facing similar charges, blogger Hossein Ronaghi has allegedly had his legs broken in detention, while prominent film directors, writers and journalists have all disappeared into Iran’s prison system.
Even athletes are being targeted, since Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi’s brave decision to compete at the Asian Championships without her hijab last month.
After Iranian beach football star Saeed Piramoon made a gesture of solidarity with protestors after scoring the winning goal in Iran’s thrilling victory over Brazil at the International Beach Soccer Tournament last week, authorities said they would be ‘dealt with’, amid reports they had been detained.
With so many athletes making clear their support for the protests, many Iranians are unimpressed with their national team’s more muted protest during their world cup loss to England, particularly after they were photographed smiling with Iran’s president Raeisi just days before flying out to Qatar.
The arrest of so many prominent Iranians surely reveals the fear the imperilled regime feels at its failure to quell the protests.
While previous attempted uprisings, like 2019’s fuel price protests, were crushed into submission, each fresh outrage has only swelled the numbers taking to the streets across the country.
As many as 15,000 people have reportedly been arrested, and several hundred killed since the protests began, including at least 40 children.
Iran’s prisons are notorious hotbeds for human rights abuses.
Torture is often routine, as I myself has experienced. Sexual violence is rife. In October, 21-year-old Armita Abbasi was hospitalised after, it has been suspected, she was repeatedly raped by security forces.
Before her family could visit her, she was abducted again by the Revolutionary Guard and she is still being held.
At Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, multiple people were killed in a fire which was believed to have been started deliberately when prisoners were locked in their cells, with those caught up in the blaze reporting that guards attacked them with tear gas and live ammunition.
When I was imprisoned in Evin Prison in 1988, thousands of political prisoners were slaughtered at the whim of Ayatollah Khomeini, in a massacre orchestrated by current president Raeisi.
In the buildup to the killings, our family visits were cancelled.
Cut off from the outside world, we would have political debates in our cells to distract ourselves from the reality that we feared for our lives.
Then, the interrogations began. We were forced to wear our chadoors, then blindfolded and taken from our cells to the feared interrogation building and questioned incessantly.
‘Are you Muslim? Will you repent? Will you condemn moharebeh?’
More than 50 prisoners were taken from my wing and I never saw them again. It turns my stomach knowing that today’s activists in Evin are suffering as we suffered.
Generations of Iranians have been suppressed under the regime’s reign of terror – but in its brutality, the regime has united Iranians from all social classes and every corner of the country.
To quote Toomaj Salehi’s protest anthem The Battlefield: ‘From athlete to artist, peddler to businessman, student and teacher, engineer and labourer, we deafen the dictator’s ear.’
For the first time, the regime appears to be fighting for its survival. Protests have only grown in recent days, and a report claims that officials are preparing to flee the country.
But if the sacrifices of Saman, Toomaj, Mahsa, Saeed and every Iranian who has risked their lives for the dream of freedom are not to be in vain, they need solidarity from the rest of the world.
Source: Metro
Iran’s protests are not an angry outburst, but the result of generations of trauma
Women, life, freedom. These words have become the rallying cry for protest that has erupted in the wake of the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s feared morality police. They are shaking the Iranian regime to its core.
Unlike past movements, this uprising cuts across generations and social classes. For young Iranian women, Amini’s death ignited an explosion of pent-up fury at the regime’s suppression of women’s rights. For older activists like me, it has reopened the scars from previous uprisings and breathed new life into the decades-long struggle for freedom.
Demonstrations began in Tehran on 16 September soon after news of Mahsa’s killing broke. Within hours, women appeared in the streets, burning their hijabs and calling for justice. Within days, the protests spread. In towns and cities across Iran, schoolchildren have abandoned their classrooms to join the masses thronging the junctions and blocking streets.
The regime’s violent response has been brutal. Killings of protesters began immediately and hundreds have already lost their lives. Last Friday in the south-east city of Zahedan, as many as 91 people were killed when state forces opened fire, including five children. Doctors certified that they had been shot from behind. Despite the regime shutting down the internet across the country, videos of police violence continue to leak out, further fuelling public rage.
Universities that have acted as staging posts for protests are now under attack from regime forces. Last Sunday, police fired on peaceful protesters at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology and at least 40 students were blindfolded and taken away in vans. Like so many parents in Iran, their families have no idea where they are. After 16-year-old Nika Shahkarami’s battered body was returned to her family by police after she disappeared at a protest, many fear the worst.
The roots of this uprising that Iranians are already calling a revolution can be found in a collective anger that has been suppressed for half a century. I became politically active soon after the Islamic regime took power and introduced its sexual apartheid laws. In 1982, I was arrested and taken to Joint Committee Interrogation Centre where I was tortured.
After hours of beatings, I was left paralysed for weeks, leaving me unable to shower or use the bathroom alone. The prison was so crowded I slept in a corridor for a month with dozens of other prisoners. We were blindfolded 24 hours a day, even eating and sleeping in darkness. Later, a guard bashed my head against the wall so hard I developed a brain tumour, an injury that troubles me to this day.
While the regime sentenced me to death, my sentence was commuted and I was eventually released in 1990. Soon after, I realised I was no longer safe, and fled to the UK. Since settling here, painting and writing have provided much relief, as has therapy from the organisation Freedom from Torture. But I am not “cured”. I still see the faces of my friends who were executed.
Ten years after I fled Iran, the regime turned the centre where I was interrogated into the Ebrat Museum. The torture chambers were preserved, with the regime claiming that they were used only by the forces of the shah, who was deposed in the 1979 revolution. But as the protests across the country demonstrate, the people have not forgotten. This is not just a burst of anger from a young and idealistic generation, but the accumulated trauma of generations of Iranians struggling for freedom.
Today, the regime is not just fighting to maintain its power but its very survival. Facing such anger from every section of society, it will kill or jail anyone who opposes it. But the people have come too far to turn back. If they give in and go home, there will be another massacre. They are fighting for their lives.
A nationwide day of action has been called for Saturday 8 October. I fear for the safety of my people. But I remain hopeful that they will sweep away the Islamic regime and realise the dreams of generations of Iranians who came before them.
- Nasrin Parvaz is a women’s rights activist and torture survivor from Iran. Her books include A Prison Memoir: One Woman’s Struggle in Iran, and the novel The Secret Letters from X to A
Source: The Guardian
Hijab Has Fallen in Iran
Seven Paintings, June 2022
Artist Statement
My works explore personal and political journeys based on both my life and collective experiences that I have witnessed and heard about.
I’m interested in evoking an emotion expressing the concerns of everyday life such as imprisonment, immigration, poverty etc – but also seeing the other side with hope and kindness. My work explores the vulnerabilities of humans which are a snapshot of collective trauma, inflicted on us by the corrupt system. I capture this in my work, regardless of the media I use: drawing, painting, sculpture or printmaking.
My exploration of these subjects started with the realisation that there were no pictures or vivid paintings when I was a political prisoner in Iran. I became a civil rights activist when the Islamic regime took power in 1979. I was arrested in 1982, tortured and spent eight years in prison.
My background study was not art, so while I started to work with watercolours at home to depict the images of prison, I went to life drawing to learn proportion. My hands met clay for the first time in 2018 and I worked with several different printing methods which helped me realise that I could say what I wanted to through art. I have found that despite the lack of control over the final image in printmaking, I could play with it during the process of creation, which made the result interesting.
Both my writing and art are about our historical time: brutal power politics and social injustices all over the world as well as the collective trauma this places on people. I feel that painting and printmaking are more immediate forms of art and means of expression than writing.
These paintings of refugees are about the English Channel which is a shameful sea of blood.
Nasrin Parvaz became a civil rights activist when the Islamic regime took power in 1979. She was arrested in 1982, and spent eight years in prison. Her books are One Woman’s Struggle in Iran, A Prison Memoir and The Secret Letters from X to A (Victorina Press 2018).
Nasrin’s poetry and stories have been published in different anthologies. Her paintings were accepted for inclusion in the exhibitions, Calendar and for postcards. Learn more at NasrinParvaz.org.
“Yo no me quiebro”, Nasrin’s Memoir in Spanish
En 1979, Nasrin Parcaz regresó a Irán desde Inglaterra, donde había ido a estudiar, y se hizo militante de un partido socialista que luchaba por un estado no islámico. Tres años más tarde, a la edad de 23, Nasrin fue detenida por la policía secreta del régimen islámico. Durante los ocho años que siguieron, estuvo prisionera recintos del sistema penal iraní.
Yo no me quiebro es un testimonio de lo que tuvo que sufrir durante esos ocho años.
https://www.victorinapress.com/product/yo-no-me-quiebro-memorias-de-una-presa-politica-irani/