[Mb-civic] FW: The Mullahs' Killing Fields

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Shahla Samii <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:20:45 -0500
Subject: The Mullahs' Killing Fields

The Mullahs' Killing Fields
By Donna M. Hughes
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 14, 2004


A former political prisoner and the daughter of two slain parents vowed
to make sure the voices of Iranians who have suffered under the Islamic
fundamentalist regime heard. The two women said they stand by other
activists who continue to be arrested, tortured, and executed in Iran
for supporting freedom and democracy.

  On the occasion of International Human Rights Day (Friday, December
10), the torture and execution of political prisoners in Iran was the
focus of a briefing in New York hosted by the non-governmental
organization Women¹s Freedom Forum. The treatment of women, especially
women political activists, was featured.

  The walls of the room were lined with documentary posters with names
and photographs of men, women, and children who had been killed by the
mullahs in Iran. A number of the photographs were family groups ­
mother, father, and two, three, four, five, even six children  that
had been killed by the Iranian regime for their political activism.

The program included videos and photographs of trials, lashings and
executions over the past 25 years. Some images were from the early days
of the revolution, some from the late 1980s, and one photograph showing
the hanging of a group of seven men in Zahedan just three days before
the event on December 7, 2004.

The victims are hoisted into the air by a crane in a public place in
order to terrorize the population and suppress further resistance to
the regime. Another Iranian-American pro-democracy non-governmental
organization The Committee in Support of Referendum in Iransends out
news clippings on a regular basis that document the executions of men,
women, and sometimes children, as the Iranian regime executes minors.
There are often two or three pages of listings of sentences and
executions. Their most recent report for November 2004 listed 15
executions or sentences for execution. A number of them are punishment
for political activity against the regime inside and outside Iran.

On November 10 a man in Tehran was sentenced to death for allegedly
killing a Tehran district mayor.

On November 21 a political prisoner was sentenced to death for
allegedly bombing a government building in 1998. He is the brother of
man known to belong to an opposition group who was killed earlier. The
report speculated that issuing a death sentence six and a half years
after an alleged crime was retaliation against the opposition group for
revealing information on the regime¹s clandestine atomic sites.

On November 22 two men were sentenced to death for allegedly clashing
with security forces.

According to state run media in Iran, 120 people were hanged in public
during a recent six-month period.

At the briefing, Farangis, a former political prisoner described her
experience and treatment by Revolutionary Guards in three different
prisons. She was born in 1959 in the southwestern Iranian city of
Masjid Suleiman in Khuzistan province. She became a political activist
after the revolution when she saw the nature of the regime that
Khomeini was constructing. She now lives in the U.S. with her family.

In 1978, I was accepted to the Medical Sciences University in Ahwaz to
study nursing. At the university, the students were pressured by
Hezbollah to join their Islamic political movement. Within a year, the
Shah was overthrown and Hezbollah called for a cultural revolution in
support of the new Khomeini regime, which included a purge of students
from the university who didn¹t support Khomeini. A number of students
were arrested. They were abused and a few were executed. All the
universities were then closed. I retuned home where I joined a union
with other students to inform people about the activities of the
regime.

At this time, my brother, who was 17 at the time, became politically
active. He was later arrested in 1982, and within five months I was
arrested also for political activity. During questioning, they tortured
us to get information. When we would not answer their questions they
said that since you are Muslims and you are not answering our questions
you are subject to ³tazir² ­flogging. They lashed us 150 times with
cables.

When I was whipped, I felt the pain for the first few lashes, then
after the 12th or 13th ones, my body would go numb. Eventually, I would
faint or freeze so that I couldn¹t move. Then they would throw me back
in the cell. At night, they took us out of the cells and make us stand
on one leg in the hall. When we got so tired we put my legs down, they
lashed us. I fainted from this routine a couple of times.

They kept us blindfolded when we were in the hall so we couldn¹t see
what was happening. Several times, I felt something burning my hands. I
didn¹t know what it was at the time, but later I learned that they put
their cigarettes out on us. You can still see the scars on my hands.
[Farangis held up her hands to the audience.]

They held a kangaroo court for the political prisoners. They placed a
paper in front of me with 40 charges against me listed on it. I was
forced to sign it. I was sentenced to four years in prison.

The arrest of my brother and I placed a lot of pressure on my family.
My father became physically and mentally ill. He eventually had a heart
attack and died. In prison, when I heard about my father¹s death, I was
not allowed to cry. Later, when they put me in solitary confinement, I
could cry. As a result of the physical treatment and mental stress, I
became paralyzed in parts of my body. I couldn¹t talk, eat, or take
care of myself. My mother requested that I be taken to a hospital, but
they wouldn¹t do it. They released me from solitary confinement and put
me back in a cell with other women. The other prisoners helped me to
take care of myself and used physical therapy to help me regain the use
of my body.

Then some of us were moved to Evin prison in Tehran. The trip took 12
hours, and every few hours they would stop, take us out of the car, and
beat us. When we arrived at Evin prison, we were beaten again. No one
could stand up.

In Evin prison we had to wear a blindfold when we were out of the cell.
We were told that if the blindfold came off we would be executed. As
result of not being able to see, I fell on the stairs and broke my arm.
I was taken to the prison clinic and treated by another prisoner. He
said my arm needed surgery, but that was not permitted, so he set it as
best he could and sent me back to my cell. You can see the difference
in my two arms. [Farangis held up both arms for us to compare them. The
right arm was visibly crooked.]  To this day, I can¹t pick up anything
that weighs much with this arm.

After two or three months in Evin prison they moved us to Ghezel Hessar
prison in Karaj, where I was placed in a cell with women as old as 60
or 70 and women with children aged one to four. One woman in her 60s
couldn¹t walk, so we helped her do everything. Babies and children up
to the age of four were in prison with their mothers. They were often
malnourished because the food was so bad. They suffered from the
unsanitary conditions and often had fungus infections.

In 1985, with the promise of my mother to supervise me, they released
me from prison. The first thing I did was go to see my father¹s grave.
I felt responsible for his death. I was depressed and wouldn¹t talk to
anyone. I just sat in the corner of the house. My mother took me to a
psychiatrist to receive treatment.

Five months later, I married an acquaintance and we moved to Shiraz. My
husband is here with me today. [She pointed him out in the audience.] I
had to present myself to the Revolutionary Guards¹ office every week.
This was hard for my husband. During this time, I saw that things had
become very difficult for women. I saw women sell themselves on the
street to buy milk for their children. And children dropped out of
school to sell things on the street to earn money for their families.

When I left prison, the Revolutionary Guards made me promise never to
reveal anything that I knew, but I became angry at what I saw and
became politically active again. I decided to tell people what I had
seen in prison. I wanted to defend women in society against what was
happening to them. The Guards found out about my activity so they
raided our house and arrested me. I was seven months pregnant.

When they took me for questioning, I could hear my husband outside
yelling for them to release me because I was pregnant. The second time
I was imprisoned I received worse treatment. Every time I was
questioned, I was kicked, whipped, and tortured. Because of the blows I
received to my back, I gave birth to my baby early. My son was weak.
They kept him in the hospital and sent me back to prison. I was
suffering physically and mentally. I was still in pain from childbirth
and then I was separated from my baby. Every day they took me to the
hospital to feed him, and then took me back to prison. Finally, as
result of efforts from my husband I was reunited with my son. At that
time I was taken for questioning for 15 to 16 hours at a time. My son
stayed with the Revolutionary Guards. When I got him back, his diaper
had not been changed and his skin became burned. He was always crying
because he was hungry and not in good condition. As a result of how I
was being treated, I didn¹t always have milk. I am still being treated
for a condition I developed at that time. I went to the judge and
begged for more food for my son, but he said that my son was a criminal
too, and predicted that when he grew up, he would be against the regime
too, so it was right to treat him as a criminal now.

In 1988, my husband got me out of prison by selling our house to raise
enough money to pay the bribes that were needed. When they released me
they told me that I couldn¹t leave the country for 20 years. If I was
arrested again, they would execute me immediately without a trial. They
said they would make my husband ask for me to be executed.

In the summer of 1988, the Iranian regime executed thousands of
political prisoners. [According to some estimates, 30,000 political
prisoners were executed over a few month period.] My younger brother
was one of the ones killed. [She pointed to a picture of him that she
brought with her. The family resemblance was obvious.] In our small
city, 30 people were executed each night. The whole community was in
mourning, but they wouldn¹t return the bodies to the families. They
buried them in a mass grave. We were not permitted to mourn. No one
could visit the families or talk about what happened. My brother had a
four-year-old daughter. Every day, she asked me where her father was. I
told her that he had gone to the sky and at night she looked into the
sky trying to find her father.

I¹m here today to be the voice of all those in Iran who have suffered
and been killed. I¹m the voice of young people and children who grew up
in prison. I am one of the victims of the regime. I lost my father and
my brother to this regime. Every time I look at the picture of my
brother, I say, ³I won¹t forget you.² I won¹t let people forget what
happened to him and many others.

I know there are people who care. I know they care about human rights
in Iran. I know they care about what is happening to people in Iran.

The event concluded with Hajar, an 18 year old woman, whose father, a
medical student, was killed by the Iranian regime when she was two
years old and whose mother was killed by the Iranian regime when she
was eight years old, saying that although she was a student with exams
next week, she needed to be at the event to make sure the voices of her
parents are heard. She did not want them to die in vain. She ended by
quoting the lyrics of song by Marzieh, one of the most famous singers
from Iran, who supports the overthrow of the mullahs¹ regime in Iran.

 

If I take a stand
And you take a stand
Then everyone will stand with us
But if I sit and you sit
Who will stand?
We have to speak
And we have to speak of the pain
We need the world to know what is going on in Iran
That it is wrong and something needs to be done.

 
Donna M. Hughes, Professor & Carlson Endowed Chair in Women¹s Studies
at the University of Rhode Island. She also made a presentation at this
event on the sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and girls in
Iran. dhughes at uri.edu
---
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16298

------ End of Forwarded Message