Even in prison, she is “an indomitable voice” for freedom in Iran

When Narges Mohammadi was a little girl, her mother told her never to get political. The price of fighting the system in a country like Iran would be too high.

That warning turned out to be prescient.

Ms. Mohammadi, 51, Iran’s most prominent human rights and women’s rights activist, is now serving a 10-year sentence in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison for “spreading anti-state propaganda”.

Her current imprisonment is not her first taste of Iran’s tough approach to dissent.

Over the past 30 years, the Iranian government has repeatedly punished her for her activism and her writing, robbing her of most of what she holds dear: her career as an engineer, her health, time with her parents, husband and children, and her freedom.

The last time Ms. Mohammadi heard the voices of her 16-year-old twins, Ali and Kiana, was over a year ago. The last time she held her son and daughter in her arms was eight years ago. Her husband, Taghi Rahmani, 63, also a writer and prominent activist who was imprisoned in Iran for 14 years, lives in exile in France with the twins.

The suffering and loss she has endured has not diminished her determination to keep pushing for change.

A small window in her cell in Evin’s women’s ward offers a view of the mountains surrounding the prison in northern Tehran. Spring brought more rain this year and the rolling hills were covered with wildflowers.

“I sit at the window every day, stare at the greenery and dream of a free Iran,” Ms Mohammadi said in April in a rare and unauthorized telephone interview from Evin. “The more they punish me, the more they take away from me, the more determined I become to fight until we achieve democracy and freedom and nothing less.”

The New York Times also interviewed Ms. Mohammadi by phone in April 2022 when she was put on a short medical leave from prison. In March and April of this year, The Times interviewed her through written questions and a surreptitious phone call from prison arranged through intermediaries.

Last month, prison authorities ordered Ms. Mohammadi’s telephone and visitation rights revoked due to statements she issued from prison condemning Iran’s human rights abuses. her Instagram pagesaid her family.

PEN America knew Mrs. Mohammadi de Barbie Freedom to Write Award at his annual gala in New York last month. The United Nations named her one of three recipients of her World Press Freedom Prize this year.

“Narges Mohammadi has been an unyielding voice against the Iranian government’s repression, even as she was one of the most persecuted targets,” said Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director from 1993 to 2022. prison cell. Her perseverance and remarkable courage are a source of inspiration worldwide.”

Mrs. Mohammadi grew up in the central city of Zanjan in a middle-class family. Her father was a cook and farmer. Her mother’s family was political, and after the Islamic Revolution brought down the monarchy in 1979, an activist uncle and two cousins ​​were arrested.

Two childhood memories, she said, led her on the path to activism: her mother cramming a red plastic shopping basket of fruit each week for prison visits with her brother, and her mother sitting on the floor near the television screen to name prisoners executed every day.

One afternoon the newsreader announced her nephew’s name. Her mother’s piercing wails and the way her body cowered in grief on the carpet left a lasting impression on the 9-year-old girl and became a driving force behind her lifelong resistance to executions.

When Mrs. Mohammadi went to university in the city of Qazvin to study nuclear physics, she wanted to join women’s student groups, but they did not exist. So she founded them, first a walking group for women and then one about social engagement.

In college, she met her husband, a well-known figure in Iran’s intellectual circles, when she attended an underground class he taught on civil society. When he proposed, her parents told her that a political marriage was doomed. Mr. Rahmani spent their first wedding anniversary in solitary confinement.

The couple lived in Tehran, where Ms. Mohammadi founded, expanded and strengthened civil society organizations dealing with women’s rights, minority rights and defending death row inmates.

She also wrote columns on women’s rights for newspapers and – in order to earn a reliable income – worked as an engineer in a building inspection agency. The government forced the company to fire her in 2008.

The judiciary has convicted Ms. Mohammadi five times, arrested 13 times and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. This year, three additional lawsuits have been opened against her that could lead to additional convictions, her husband said.

Their family of four hasn’t been together as a unit, when one parent hasn’t been in prison or exiled, since the twins were toddlers. Ms Mohammadi and Mr Rahmani both said their son often says he is proud of his mother’s work, but their daughter has questioned her parents’ decision to have children, while their activism is a priority at all costs Remained.

On holidays and birthdays, the children mourn her absence more intensely, her husband said.

“This separation has been forced upon us. It is very difficult. As a husband and father, I want Narges to come and live with us. And as her partner in activism, I have an obligation to support and encourage her work and raise her voice,” said Mr. Rahmani in an interview in New York then he came to receive the PEN award on her behalf.

Since September last year, the couple’s activism has taken on more urgency. A revolt broke out across Iran, led by women and girls, demanding an end to the Islamic Republic. It was triggered by the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of the morality police over allegations of violating Iran’s hijab rules.

Even from detention, Ms. Mohammadi encouraged civil disobedience, condemned the government’s violent crackdown on demonstrators, including executions, and demanded that world leaders pay attention to Iranians’ struggles for freedom.

Her decades-long efforts have helped raise general awareness in Iran of these issues. For Iran to become a democracy, she says, the change must come from within through the development of a robust civil society.

“Like many activists in prison, I am consumed with finding a way to support the movement,” she said in the written portion of the interview. “We, the people of Iran, are leaving the theocracy of the Islamic Republic. Transition will not jump from one point to another. It will be a long and difficult process, but the evidence suggests it will definitely happen.”

Ms. Mohammadi has always treated the prison as a platform for activism and a petri dish for scientific research. During the uprising, she organized three protests and sit-ins and gave speeches in the prison yard. The women sang, chanted and painted the walls with slogans, which were promptly erased by the guards.

While in prison, she conducted weekly workshops for female inmates, teaching them about civil rights.

Ms. Mohammadi’s research from prison, based on interviewing detainees, resulted in a book about the emotional impact of solitary confinement and prison conditions in Iran. In December, she released a report on the systematic sexual assault and physical abuse of female prisoners.

Her friends and colleagues say that Ms. Mohammadi’s most remarkable quality is her refusal to be a victim. A trained singer in Persian classical music, she organizes gatherings in the ward where she sings, plays rhythmic tombak on a pot and dances with the other women. In March on Nowruz, the Persian New Year, she led a group that Persian rendition of the Italian protest song ‘Bella Ciao’.

“When the prison drags on for many years, you have to give meaning to your life within the confinement and keep the love alive,” Ms Mohammadi said. “I have to keep my eyes on the horizon and the future, even though the walls of the prison are high and close and block my view.”