It has been eleven years since Narges Mohammadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2023, has not seen her husband, the journalist and former political prisoner (as she is now) Taghi Rahmani, and she has not spoken to him or her children for 22 months. The violence of the Islamic Republic against human rights activists will prevent Mohammadi from attending Oslo this Sunday, where the most prestigious award in the world will recognize “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran” and her work for “the rights and the freedoms of all. Rahmani, who has been in Spain this week to maintain the flame of Mohammadi’s commitment, also materialized in a book, ‘White Torture’ (Alianza Editorial), which collects the testimonies of 14 women imprisoned in Iran, will collect the award in his name.
Mohammadi, who has been in prison for most of the last 20 years (she was imprisoned again in 2022), is sentenced to 31 years. “The regime has opened five new files on her during her stay in prison, but she maintains good mental strength and is resisting the impositions of the Government, which does not admit that there is a human rights defender,” says Rahmani, who lives exiled in Paris since 2011 with the couple’s children. And although the Islamic Republic prefers to ignore the award, the Nobel has been a wake-up call “for world public opinion to know their situation,” says the activist’s husband, who is trying to get his wife to send him a few words so that their children They can read them at the ceremony.
The women’s movement led by Mohammadi against the regime took shape on September 16, 2022 following the death in police custody of the 22-year-old girl Mahsa Yina Amini, who three days earlier had been arrested, accused of carrying incorrectly. the veil. A battle began to be settled in the street that has not yet ended. The protests, which have since left 500 dead and 20,000 detained, have shaken the ayatollah regime, which according to Rahmani, is “in stoppage time.” «It uses oil money to pay its security forces, the Guardians of the Revolution, which are the most ferocious armed wing of the dictatorship, and it also uses everything that happens in the region, such as the war in Gaza, or the “hasty departure of United States troops from Afghanistan, to try to put an end to internal dissidence.” But the policy of looking for an external enemy, “similar to what Franco followed in Spain,” recalls Rahmani, is also running out. “If there were free elections now, less than 10% of the population would vote in favor of the regime,” he predicts.
Mohammadi has suffered physical harm in prison, and over time, the regime has added a new form of punishment, called ‘white torture’, to which the title of the book refers, psychological repression, which is more “effective”, the human rights defender emphasizes. Rahmani explains that prisoners are held for months in cells two meters high by one and a half meters wide and that they can only speak to their executioners. «There comes a time when you tell them what they want to hear, even if it means your death sentence or the death of your companions. “White torture is very common in Iran,” he asserts.
Hidden in fierce diatribes against the United States or against the most belligerent European countries against the Iranian dictatorship, the ayatollahs of the Islamic Republic only seek to preserve their status quo. «(Alí) Khamenei (Iran’s supreme leader) does not want to risk what he has. On the one hand, he says that Iran will never accept the West, but at the same time he does not oppose the West. It does not enter any war,” argues Rahmani.
The position of the West
In a situation as complicated for activists as that of Iran, their only hope lies in the position that the West takes against the regime. And there they also show their disappointment. «Although they are not a homogeneous block, many Western countries put the need to obtain cheap energy first. But having low-priced oil can be a very big problem for democracies, as we saw on 9/11,” recalls Rahmani.
«That is why we demand a change in the strategy of Europe and the United States towards Iran. If the societies of Western countries want freedom in our country, and we know that this is the case, they must ask their governments not to sign agreements with regimes like Iran, which do not respect human rights,” he proposes.
But beyond geopolitics, Mohammadi and the rest of the Iranian activists are experiencing a personal and human tragedy that punishes them and their families. «When I asked his parents for his hand, they told him that they didn’t want him to marry me because it would destroy his life. And she has come to ask for forgiveness from our children because she says that she has not been the best mother because of her commitment to her freedom. These are the effects of the dictatorship. This life has been imposed on us, but we remain together and united,” concludes Rahmani.
#Iran #oil #money #repress #human #rights #activists