Remember – Part Two: Assault on the Bodies of Protesting Women; Accounts of Sexual Abuse in Iranian Prisons

I have witnessed and heard accounts of assaults by men of the Islamic Republic of Iran against women. My protest is against the assaults of men from the Islamic Republic against women, particularly, I emphasize my objection to the assaults of men from the religious government against myself, and I will not participate in the court. More than 23 to 24 instances of bruising, from my neck, chest to my thigh, which were marks left by the hands of men from the Islamic Republic, have been recorded... These are the words of Narges Mohammadi. She testifies to the marks left by men of the Islamic Republic on the bodies of protesting women. The men of the religious government, the claimants and promoters of the culture of modesty and honor, and we, in the second issue of the "Remember" series, a year after the beginning of the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement and the hand-to-hand struggle of protesting women with the Islamic Republic over freedom and dignity, remember the thousands of defenseless women prisoners in the prisons of the Islamic Republic; their defenseless bodies, frightened, curled up... What happens to women in these prisons? How were protesting women arrested during the protests of 2022? Under what conditions were they interrogated? Why were women stripped naked? Why and how did protesting women - naked as the moment of birth - stand before the agents of the government without any shelter or clothing? Mojgan Kashavarz, a women's rights activist, recounts her experience: "We were sitting at home when we heard a knock at the door. I opened the door. The interrogators entered. They put their feet in the door and an overwhelming fear took over me. I had just returned home, showered, and put on comfortable clothes. They didn’t even let me throw a sheet over myself. It was a very bad situation. I felt sexual abuse because my body was naked and they were looking at me... men I didn’t know and I felt unsafe and didn’t know where to hide my body. My body was completely exposed and I was wearing a very thin, ordinary piece of clothing. I didn’t know whether to hide my legs or the upper part of my body and I was really uncomfortable." She continues: "They threw my books on the ground and said, yes, this is Forough. You read Forough and Shamloo, that’s why you think like this." She recalls: "My daughter, terrified, went into the bathroom and locked the door. They realized someone was inside the bathroom because they saw who had gone in. They kicked the bathroom door and said they would break it down. I said please don’t do anything to her. She is a child." Mojgan Kashavarz speaks of the agents' behavior: "There was a drawing on the refrigerator door that Niki had drawn. It was about hijab and she had written that she didn’t like hijab and had drawn girls who were without hijab in class. [Derived from] her own imaginations of how she wanted to go to school. They handed the drawing to Niki and said tear it up. Niki stood her ground and said I will not tear it up. They took the drawing and tore it themselves and crushed it and poured it over Niki's head. They said when the mother is like this, it’s clear what her child can be like... After hours, their female officer arrived. I didn’t have any clothes on and they didn’t allow me to change my clothes. When the female officer arrived, I changed my clothes and they handcuffed me in front of Niki and told her to say goodbye to her mother because her mother would not return. They broke the heart of an 8 or 9-year-old child. I sent kisses to Niki and raised my bound hands and told her I would return, be strong." The sexual abuse of female protesters begins from the moment of arrest. Most often, there is an unannounced visit to the place of residence or work, intimidation and terrorizing of women, not allowing them to change from their comfortable home clothes, and leering at their defenseless bodies... Mojgan Kashavarz says: "No matter how much I begged them to give me something to cover myself, they said we have nothing and we don’t know, and you must wait until our female officer arrives. That’s where the sexual abuse and violence against me began." Mojgan Kashavarz is a women's rights activist and a protester against compulsory hijab. A woman who, along with two other women, Yasaman Aryani and her mother, Monireh Arabshahi, congratulated International Women’s Day in the women’s wagons of the Tehran metro and gave a white rose to each woman. These three women were later pursued, arrested, and sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison in Branch 54 of the Tehran Court of Appeals! Mojgan Kashavarz, with a sentence of 23 years and six months in prison, which was reduced to 12 years and seven months in the Court of Appeals, was on conditional release at the onset of the 2022 protests. She was arrested again because she had shouted "Women, Life, Freedom." She and thousands of other women. One of them is Elaheh Ejbari. A woman from the torn heart of Sistan and Baluchestan, a graduate in psychology. On December 9, 2022, her wounded and tormented body was found in one of the streets of Tehran. Her body had been tortured and her head was shaved. Four days earlier, security agents had kidnapped her and taken her to an unknown location. She says: "In those three or four days I was there, I had no clothes on. They had taken off my clothes and were mocking my body. They emphasized my being Baluch and being a woman. They said, why is your skin color like this? Why do you have so many spots... why your skin... excuse me, it’s a bit hard for me..." Elaheh drinks a glass of water. She continues: "What I heard was that they wanted to shave all my hair off. Then there was a disagreement among them. One said if we shave all her hair, it will be evidence, let her go. Another said okay then let’s cut her hair with scissors. My hands and feet were also tied. They had injected me with two needles. I didn’t know what those needles were, but my body was limp and I couldn’t speak comfortably. It was as if I had no control over my hands and feet. I was dizzy, I was dazed, and I couldn’t properly recognize the sounds around me. That’s when they cut my hair. With this idea and goal that you all wanted to achieve this in this revolution! Didn’t you come to have your hair cut? You enjoy being humiliated and having your hair cut!" She recalls: "The last time I was arrested, I was beaten a lot. The first time I was taken, it wasn’t like this, that I was beaten so much, but this time I was beaten a lot and I was very scared. I mean, I haven’t really said this elsewhere, but I even lost control of my bladder and that’s why I didn’t really know what was happening. I was just dazed and after the injections, I was even more dazed." Elaheh Ejbari says: "When they took off my clothes, they were mocking my skin color and saying you’re not even pretty enough to seek freedom and show your body. Your skin is full of spots and dark. What do you want to show?" When I entered there, they started taking off my clothes. Before that, I was kicking and screaming, but at some point, I just went silent. I was very scared and they kept hitting me in the face and saying we’ll beat you to death. They said why are you talking so much? Shut up and I was very scared and made no resistance. They took off all my clothes. Even my underwear. When they were doing this, they said let’s see what you have that you want to show your body so much? Your other activist friends are like this? They used the word breast exactly and said you have no breast, no ass! What do you want to show?" Elaheh Ejbari recalls with difficulty: "They were laughing. I think there were four of them. I don’t know exactly. There were four and they were laughing together... Women are stripped naked behind closed doors, in unknown places, outside of any oversight, and they laugh... they laugh... collectively they laugh... as if it’s a tunnel of horror. For many women, sexual abuse begins from the moment of the raid on their homes, arrest, and transfer to an unknown location or, if they are lucky, to a detention center, like what Mojgan Kashavarz recounted; like what Leila Mansour recalls: "Suddenly I saw a bearded man at the door. I came to close the door when he put his foot in the door and pushed it hard and came inside. At that moment, I felt the first invasion of my personal space had occurred. I had a history of arrest in 2009 but had been arrested on the street both times. The way they burst in and arrested me in my private home seemed unbearable to me." Leila Mansour recalls: "From the very first day in front of Kasra, actually the day Mahsa Amini was killed and the news of her death reached the hospital, I was present there. Eventually, I was arrested on November 25 and the reason for my arrest was a photo taken of me at the gathering for Mahsa’s fortieth on November 4." Elaheh Ejbari: They took off all my clothes. Even my underwear. When they were doing this, they said let’s see what you have that you want to show your body so much? Your other activist friends are like this? On the fortieth day of Mahsa Amini's killing, in the police detention center; the day many protesters were arrested. Many were shot with pellets and batons and couldn’t even go to any hospital. Leila was arrested less than a month after those protests. Just like Mojgan when she had just returned home. She recounts: "The day they came to my house, it was the first week of my period and I had just had a hysterectomy the week before because I had a lot of fibroids and severe bleeding. When they came to the house, I was stressed and wanted to go to the bathroom, and these women wouldn’t let me. They said we must first search the house completely and before leaving, we will allow you to go to the bathroom." And the account of Fatemeh, Fatemeh Khushru, who was an animal rights activist and was arrested on November 25, 2019, in Khorramabad. In the protests before the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement, her experience also included abuse and coercion to undress in front of male and female agents: "During the arrest, it didn’t matter to them at all. They touched our bodies. We were transferred to the IRGC Intelligence Organization and there we were forced to undress in front of two men and two women. We protested and said we didn’t want to be naked in front of these men. They wanted to conduct a body search. When we protested, it seemed that those two men were embarrassed and went outside. We were a group and when it was our turn to undress, out of sheer shame, we didn’t look at each other at all." Fatemeh Khushru continues: "During the arrest and interrogation, they used sexual terms to humiliate us. They would label you with the relationships you had or with the person you were in contact with, the interrogators would impose these on you as a stigma and convey to you that you are not a good woman, you are not a pure girl, you have a relationship with this person and we will tell your family about this. One or two of the women who were with me were threatened. Even one of the girls was a lesbian and they constantly threatened her that they would tell her brothers. All these sexual terms and insults were used without any shame in front of the interrogators and the female guards who were present there. There was absolutely no sense of shame among them and to belittle and humiliate us, they constantly used these vulgar words." Vulgar words, sexual slurs, references to body parts, dirty gender jokes... Sexual abuse of political prisoners, whether during arrest, in temporary detention centers and prisons, during interrogations and even in patrol vans during the transfer of detainees. The Islamic Republic has always denied everything since the 1980s. Even when people like Ayatollah Montazeri, who was once the deputy leader of the Islamic Republic, protested in a letter about the rape of female prisoners. From reports of rape, stripping of sexual organs, and urinating on the bodies of political prisoners in Kahrizak prison to a letter from Mehdi Mahmoudian, a member of the Participation Front to Khamenei in 2011, which reported sexual assault against prisoners in Rajai Shahr prison in Karaj as a common occurrence. Nevertheless, to this day, one year after the start of the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement, and dozens of reports of government sexual abuse during these protests have been published, no international monitoring body has ever reached the prisons of the Islamic Republic.