Ms. Shahin Mahinfar posted a letter on October 13, 2016, saying that she could watch the video clip of how his son got killed for the first time after seven years. Following is the text click here
In another post she wrote: it’s Time for the Tyrants to Cry
Iranian women and activist mothers who have lost their children under the mullahs' oppressive regime in Iran, spoke out against the executions in Iran on the World Day against the Death Penalty.
In a post on her Facebook, the anti-Death Penalty activist Sholeh Pakravan wrote, "No to executions, long live freedom. October 10 is a special day, the World Day against the Death Penalty. Because of the highest number of executions in our country, every day can be called a day to protest this naked violence. When we see bloodied (trace of noose around the) necks of those executed, we must protest and ask why? The world must also intervene. Combatting executions must have priority over any talk. It must be pre-condition to every deal. To combat the death penalty, we need national determination. The people of Iran must unite their voices and say: Executions are enough. No to executions. Long live freedom."
Ms. Shahin Mahinfar, mother of Amir-Arshad Tajmir who was killed by revolutionary guards in the 2009 uprising, also wrote, "Execution is a medieval sentence which is not appropriate for human beings. Our nation that has suffered loss many of her youths, cries out in one voice: No to executions; No to executions; No to executions."
The flame of resistance and struggle in the freedom movement has always been alive and it continues to burn in the face of Iran’s stifling dictatorship that holds the world’s record in executions.
Alongside the freedom fighters, there have always been young men and women who brave the obstacles and sacrifice their own lives in responding to the call of the movement. Each of them shines like a star, piercing through the dark night of oppression and heralding the dawn.
Following in their footsteps with love and compassion, are their mothers, sisters, and relatives who deeply believe that their loved ones did not die in vain and need to continue their path until final fruition.
Certainly, the gushing pain and anger of mothers join together and become a devastating flood that will wash away the filth of the mullahs' religious dictatorship from Iran. Read more about these mothers click here
Ms. Hajar Rostami commemorated her daughter on June 19, 2016, at her tomb while accompanied by a number of other bereaved mothers and relatives of those slain in the 2009 uprising.
Neda Agha Soltan was one of the thousands who were killed during the 2009 uprising. She was shot dead in Tehran’s Amir Abad district on June 20, 2009. A short film taken by a mobile phone and posted on the internet which showed her last moments, dying with her eyes open shocked the world and opened their eyes to the Iranian people's deep-rooted opposition to the ruling regime. Thus Neda became the symbol of the 2009 uprising. Mother of Murdered Iranian Dissident Supports Political Prisoner Jafar Azimzadeh
Mother of Murdered Iranian Dissident Supports Political Prisoner Jafar Azimzadeh
Sholeh Pakravan, the mother of Reyhaneh Jabbari, has spoken prominently about the human rights abuses in Iran since her daughter was executed in 2014, and has now written an open letter of support to Mr. Azimzadeh. Text of her letter
On the eve of International Women’s Day, Sholeh Pakravan, mother of Rayhaneh Jabbari- the young Iranian girl, that was sentenced to death and later executed despite international outrage, for defending herself against a rapist- sent a message to mark International Women's Day, March 8th and expressed her outrage at the Iranian mullahs' misogyny.
The message reads in part:
“On the occasion of March 8th, International Women's Day: I am a woman. A silent woman who has the cries of silent women from the depths of the history in her heart. I am a woman who has felt with my flesh and skin the suffering of the innocent girls whose right and justice seeking voices in their defense are not heard when they are raped. Because my child was in such a situation. I am a mother. The mother of the girl who went to the gallows unjustly.”
She goes on to say, “My Rayhaneh has now joined history. But her perseverance and insistence on truth and justice, has been a model for many girls. Oppressors abducted Rayhaneh from my arms and hanged her. Unaware that Rayhaneh's (basil) seeds were planted in the ground and thousands of green and fresh basil will grow from it.”
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) stands in solidarity with the women of Iran who have had to go through such terrible exploitation and oppression. On Saturday, February 27, 2016, on the eve of the International Women’s Day, a grand gathering entitled, “Pledge for Parity: Women United against Fundamentalism” was held in the presence of the Iranian Resistance's President-elect Maryam Rajavi and a number of political dignitaries, intellectuals, prominent personalities, and activists of the equality movement from 26 countries and four continents.
She said that, "Mandatory veil, is an all-inclusive and permanent tool for suppression of women. In a matter of only one year, 3.6 million women were inspected and questioned on the streets for "improper veiling" and 18,000 women were put on trial.”
The NCRI is of the view that the common practice of violence and rape against women and widespread addiction and misery of women are among products of the mullahs' corrupt Sharia.
In Iran under the rule of the mullahs, polygamy, anti-human treatment of women and girl children, sexual abuse of girl children under 9 years of age are justified and imposed on women. Mrs Rajavi said that the Velayat-e Faqih is a senseless monopoly that is confronting women's equal rights full force. “They have turned Iran into a big prison for women.”
Women are the main victims of fundamentalism in Iran. The NCRI supports theirs struggle against oppression. With solidarity and unity of action, they can play a significant and key role in combatting the excesses of the Iranian regime
Mr. Saleh Kohandel, a political prisoner currently held in a notorious prison in Iran has written a letter marking March 8th, International Woman’s Day to his daughter, Paria, who managed to secretly exit Iran last year and join the main Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
“I congratulate my daughters, Paria, and Zahra, and all your colleagues from inside the dungeons of the fundamentalist mullahs’ prisons. I say loud and clear: Thousands and thousands of salutations to you for choosing such a beautiful path and said no to the reactionary culture of the mullahs… congratulations to you
Of course, I was certain that none of the chains and restrictions of their culture could not keep you in their grasps. About me, don’t be worried because I have placed my entire cause to you, my spirit is with you and only my physical body is imprisoned by the inhumane mullahs, which itself is not very important. Now the mullahs’ regime is seeking to decay my body in solitary confinement, hang me like [PMOI member] Mr. Saremi, or have me murdered like my heroic friend, Shahrokh Zamani.
My girl, Paria, on such a beautiful day (International Women’s Day), which the misogynist mullahs cannot even tolerate as their ancestors buried girls alive and now they are splashing acid on innocent women’s faces, I am asking you to on my behalf congratulate those who are struggling for the freedom and liberation of Iranian women from the fundamentalist mullahs. It doesn’t matter what religion they may believe in.
And to those appeasing the mullahs, tell them to not waste their time because the future is ours and the mullahs will be defeated.
May victory be yours
Saleh Kohandel
Gohardasht Prison of Karaj – March 20 16
The mother of Reyhaneh Jabbari, an Iranian woman in her twenties who was executed a year ago for killing an Iranian intelligence agent who had attempted to rape her, spoke out against the injustices in Iran by the mullahs’ regime at a gathering on Sunday at Tehran's Behesht Zahra Cemetery to mark the first anniversary of her daughter’s execution.
Sholeh Pakravan said there are “hundreds and hundreds” of mother’s in Iran who cannot sleep at night because their sons and daughters have been snatched away from them by the authorities in Iran.
Iran's fundamentalist regime last year executed Ms. Pakravan’s daughter, Reyhaneh Jabbari, at the age of 26.
Ms. Pakravan was joined at the ceremony by Ms. Gohar Eshghi, the mother of dissident Iranian web-logger Sattar Beheshti who was tortured to death in prison in Iran in 2012. Ms. Eshghi said she did not fear what the regime might do to her and she vowed to be the voice of her late son to bring his murderers to justice. Click here for details
Iranians mark anniversary of Reyhaneh Jabbari’s execution
Despite a clampdown on anti-regime gatherings and a heightened security presence around Reyhaneh’s grave, brave Iranians, including the families of the martyrs of the 1980s prison massacre and the 2009 anti-regime uprising, took part in the ceremony. Among the attendees were Dr. Mohammad Maleki, the first Chancellor of the University of Tehran following the 1979 revolution, and Ms. Gohar Eshghi, the mother of dissident web-logger Sattar Beheshti who was tortured to death in prison in 2012.
Plainclothes agents of the regime photographed the attendees on their departure.
When she was just 19 years old, Ms. Reyhaneh Jabbari was working as a decorator when she was forced to defend herself against an assault by the intelligence agent. She was jailed for seven years and was executed on October 25, 2014 despite an international campaign to save her.
Also there was gathering in her memory in all over the world Click here for details
In Ottawa on Oct. 24, 2015: Iranian-Canadians in front of US embassy condemning wave of executions in Iran and remembering Reyhaneh Jabbari on the anniversary of her execution
Also in a a wonderful action in Sidney take a look at photos yes Reyhaneh , lives on in us
Remembering Reyhaneh Jabbari Sunday, 25 October 2015 00:00 By William C. Anderson, Truthout | Op-Ed
On the anniversary of Reyhaneh Jabbari's execution by the Iranian government, it's important to remember her through her own words
"With a hanging rope in front of my eyes, that I am not afraid of, I write to tell the tale that I lived, leaving nothing unspoken." - Reyhaneh Jabbari
Today is a cold anniversary marred by the reminder of an unjust death. On this day one year ago, Reyhaneh Jabbari was executed by hanging in Iran. She was only 26 years old at the time of her death. Despite the fact she was taken from this earth, she left us many important things before her departure. She willed us words that are eternally poetic, whether she intended them that way or not, whether she knew they would reach us or not.
The death of Reyhaneh Jabbari is more than just an unfortunate event. She is more than the horror that led up to her untimely demise. She was a young woman full of things we needed to hear and it's a shame that the world was only allowed to read about her in the terrible outcome of her "trial" and the international disgust thereafter. It's important for us all to realize that her execution, the injustice around it and the chauvinism hurled at her are not just Iranian problems.
Reyhaneh was convicted of killing a man she said attempted to rape her. She was arrested in 2007 after being accused of the murder of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former Iranian intelligence ministry worker. She wrote from prison about how she was forced to confess to premeditated murder:
Once they took me somewhere for interrogation where I saw a 14 or 15 year old girl hanging from the ceiling from her wrists. The girl was pale, her lips were cracked. She was whimpering.
[In another room,] the interrogator sat across from me and said that today or tomorrow they would go get my little sister ... He referred to her by name: Badook. "It is her turn," he said. "She is frail, thin ... How long do you think she will last hanging like that one?" He began telling me in detail what he was going to do in front of me to my little sister ... I started crying and begged him not to do such a thing. He said he had no alternative. I asked him what I could do to stop him from hurting my sister. He said: "It is very simple. Just confess that you bought the knife before the murder." ... So I wrote that I had bought the knife beforehand, signed the paper and breathed a sigh of relief.
She would spend years in prison awaiting her execution. I imbibed whatever words I could find from her after reading about her story and came to see her extremely moving heart in the expressions rendered from the captivity of imprisonment. The late Jabbari was a woman who like many other women became prey for the deviant intentions of men.
In Mexico, a case with some parallels took place with Yakiri Rubi Rubio. According to Yakiri, on December 9, 2013, she was abducted by two brothers who took her back to a hotel at knifepoint where they sexually abused her. She was ultimately able to use the weapon against her assailants and escape. Although she was not executed for defending herself, it was 18 months later after she'd spent time in prison that courts would concede she was defending herself.
Iran's regional rival, Saudi Arabia, sentenced a woman to six months in prison and 200 lashes for her gang rape around the same time Reyhaneh was arrested. Her punishment increased when she spoke to the media about what happened to her. She would ultimately be pardoned though she too faced prison time for her rape.
The state and its executioners often back up and reinforce the men who victimize rather than the women who have been victimized.
Women's punishment and death for rape and sexual abuse are not new phenomena. Europe and the United States both have rich histories in this regard. From the kidnapping and rape of enslaved African and Native women to the witch trials that took place throughout, criminalizing women at any expense was normalized as foundational early on in the formation of the nation-states we recognize today.
An early example lies in the case of a 19-year-old enslaved woman named Celia. After years of being raped by her "owner," Robert Newsom, she eventually became unwilling to take any more of his abuse. One night after Newsom informed Celia he would be paying her a visit she clubbed him to death upon arrival to her cabin. She faced trial over his murder and was hung at the gallows, like Reyhaneh, for killing the man who regularly violated her. Death makes permanent the solution then and now for many women who dare to challenge the desire of their male attackers.
The state and its executioners often back up and reinforce the men who victimize rather than the women who have been victimized. Reyhaneh's case is one more example of the futility of the death penalty.
I can never hope to completely understand the struggle or the women who have been taken away by the endless vortex of sexist accusation and punishment. For centuries, dating back to the most ancient of times, this spectacle has been repeated. Another young star was destroyed before she could actualize her hopes and her dreams. Reyhaneh told us as much when she wrote:
Anytime I think of my hopes and dreams, I start to cry. When I fall asleep thinking of the hopes I had for my future, I dream of myself on my wedding day wearing a white dress. Then slowly the dress turns from white to black, my eye makeup looks like I have been crying, my face is covered with black tulle and I see myself holding a bouquet of dried up dead flowers. I have never told a soul about this until now. No one knows how I was forced to give up the love of my life. I had to. When I was nineteen I had no idea that my life would go up in smoke in that house and that a few years later, the courts would decide to make me into ashes.
These institutions that snatched Reyhaneh are grossly repetitive: misogyny, execution and government. The way they worked in harmony to stifle her voice is an evil harmony in a sad song that plays on repeat the world over. Be it where I live in the United States or in Iran, each of these systems has the complete and full capability of committing more trauma on top of what already preexists. There is no reconciliation in the needles that inject poison, the ropes that squeeze necks or any of the methods governments use to kill those they have deemed unfit to live.
The irony lies in the fact that the ones who choose to take life see themselves as holy and in situations like Reyhaneh's, governments spite their adversaries by condemning them for killing women and men like her. Meanwhile, they all do the same to their own citizens. Reyhaneh was not a tool for jingoists to label Iran as primitive. She was a person who had her own life, her own desires and her own words. She was special and unique in the softness of her existence.
The reality that permanently stripped her of her physical consciousness was like a bullet piercing a cloud. Despite the fact she is gone and I'll never see her face, or read new words from her, she is still here. She will come and reform again and again like water that evaporates and falls from the sky and separates to go off distances. She is living because she chose to live through her final experience and surpass the boundaries of physical death.
In her final words to her mother, she said:
My kind mother, dear Sholeh, the one more dear to me than my life, I don't want to rot under the soil. I don't want my eye or my young heart to turn into dust ... Beg so that it is arranged that as soon as I am hanged my heart, kidney, eye, bones and anything that can be transplanted be taken away from my body and given to someone who needs them as a gift. I don't want the recipient to know my name, buy me a bouquet, or even pray for me. I am telling you from the bottom of my heart that I don't want to have a grave for you to come and mourn there and suffer. I don't want you to wear black clothing for me. Do your best to forget my difficult days. Give me to the wind to take away.
Reyhaneh has certainly given us her heart and spilled its beauty for us to carry it with us wherever we should go. In her words, she gave us bones to make us strong and kidneys to cleanse us of the toxins of this world. And lastly she gave us eyes to see if we will only look through them.
Mrs. Sholeh Pakravan, Reyhaneh Jabbari’s mother talks on the occasion of Oct. 10th the World Day Against Execution. She calls on those who execute people under the banner of the so called 'Justice' and those who see this horrifying and disgusting scene of a man or a woman battling for their life on the end of the rope, be it in public or inside prisons.
Mrs. Pakravan, as she claims, is an advocate of No to execution, since her own daughter, Reyhaneh was hanged last year on Oct. 25th for a so called crime that is in every man and woman’s right, in defense of her honor against a sexual assault by an Iranian intelligence ministry officer.
Mrs. Pakravan says come to me to tell you a bitter story, perhaps you would wake up and join our hands and be a part of those who oppose execution. Perhaps your dreams would become our dreams of an Iran without execution, an Iran without the death penalty.
In the occasion of World Day Against the Death Penalty Mrs. Maryam Rajavi in her twitter announced:
International community’s silence over executions in Iran for trade interest with mullahs, blatant collaboration in massacring people in Iran and region
World Day Against the Death Penalty Time for EU to speak out on Iran
Despite the July 14 Iran nuclear deal, the Iranian regime is continuing its "unacceptable" use of the death penalty. European Parliament President Martin Schulz's upcoming visit to Iran is the perfect occasion for him to take a stand, writes Belgian MEP Gérard Deprez, chairman of Friends of a Free Iran in the European Parliament.
"This time last year, European Parliament President Martin Schulz wrote to the speaker of the Iranian parliament, expressing grave concern about 26 year-old Reyhaneh Jabbari, who had been sentenced to death for defending herself against sexual assault by a government security official," Mr Deprez wrote on Friday for Euractiv.com.
"Mr Schulz asked for a 'fair retrial, in line with well-established universal standards, and without recourse to the death penalty.' However, Ms Jabbari was sadly hanged two weeks later despite a worldwide campaign to save her." Click here for details
On Monday, 05 October a number of teachers and support teachers in Tehran protested.
The gathering was in front of the office doors of education in the
Palestinian street, and n Vanak Square near the Gandhi Tehran.
In this gathering Mrs. Sholeh Pakravan mother of Reyhaneh Jabbari in very simple words said:
prison
is not the place of teachers,every body in Society owes them, how dare
this brutal regime could put them in jail? we promise thatwe will continuetosupportteachersandother prisoners...
Integrated crowd chanted: teacher prisoners must be freed, not a prison teacher, teacher, worker, student union alliance.
They waved banners which demanded the release of imprisoned teacher and respond to their demands.
On Thursday, 08 October also will continue the protests of all citizens to participate in the protests invited.
Also in northern Iran Teachers protest for their rights A
group of teachers from Gilan Province, northern Iran, on Monday
protested outside the local branch of the regime's Education Ministry in
the city of Rasht.
The Iranian teachers protested against inequality, poor living standards, and overdue wages.
There was a strong presence of female teachers among the protesters.
On
September 22, on the eve of the new Iranian academic year, Mrs. Maryam
Rajavi, the Iranian Resistance's President-elect, hailed Iran’s
university and high school students, teachers, and professors as “future
makers” and wished them a fruitful year with more extensive protests
and advancement on the path of
freedom and emancipation of the people of
Iran
October 25 marks the anniversary of the hanging execution of Reyhaneh Jabbari in 2014.
Reyhaneh Jabbari walked to the gallows at dawn on Saturday, October 25, 2014, after seven years of incarceration.
Since then, Reyhaneh stands as the symbol of Iran’s defenseless women who are handed the death penalty without deserving it. At the same time, she has become an icon for brave women who do not succumb to the Iranian regime and its demands.
She was 26 at the time of execution. An interior designer by profession, she had defended herself against rape by a high official of the Intelligence Ministry (MOIS), Morteza Sarbandi.
Reyhaneh was viciously tortured to make false “confessions” which would whitewash the methods and image of the Ministry of Intelligence but she did not give in. Instead, she wrote about the incident and about many women in the clerical regime’s jails whose only crime was being poor.
She cried for and wrote about the victims of the clerical regime’s misogynous laws and for the young women who did not have any support in society and were victims of oppression and violence.
Let us remember on this day, this young courageous woman, Reyhaneh Jabbari, who resisted for seven years at the cost of her life to uphold her dignity and humanitarian values.
She remains an idol for young Iranian women and men who oppose the regime’s injustices and yearn freedom. In her name, and in the name of all the innocent victims of the clerical regime, the people of Iran call for justice.
Let's light a candle in loving memory of Reyhaneh Jabbari on 25th October and promise her that we will be her voice for freedom, justice and peace of all people of Iran and especially Iranian women who have been suffering form double suppression of their rights as the fascist regime of Mullahs of Iran treat them as the second class citizens
Reyaneh Jabbari's last letter (Voice message) that is considered her will
I am Reyhaneh Jabbari and am 26 years old. I confess that I am no longer willing to continue this way of life. It feels as if the meaning of life is only breathing and sewing the seams of day to the seams of night. Repetition and expectation has worn out my spirit—like sand paper on my soul. At the moment both my body and my soul are bloodied and wounded. I feel like those soldiers fighting in battle. They use all their energy defeating the enemy. The ways to destroy the enemy occupies their mind so much that they no longer think of those at home. But soon if they do not achieve anything in battle, they become defeated. Stillness of expectation eats a man like termites from within. Most long wars end because the soldiers’ spirits are broken– on both sides. No matter what the leaders of a country say, no matter who they name the winner and the loser, the civilians know how much they suffered. The graveyards of both countries bare witness—chock full of pieces of their youth. Houses without roofs.
I am Reyhaneh, 26, and I am tired of the grueling war I have been fighting with the Sarbandi family, for my freedom—a family that I do not hate. After all the years that have passed after the incident I have realized that although Sarbandi was not a young man, he had not learned many lessons from life. Like the fact that he had no right to lure me to a place and he had no right to force himself on me. He had no rights to me. Why did this have to happen? I thought about this day and night. Why did he attack me and how was it that a man of such stature fell to such low levels? Ours was the opposite sides of fate. I came to a conclusion that he wanted nothing more than pleasure for himself and he wanted it by force and I wanted nothing more than to break away from him— by force. I came to that discovery while speaking to my cellmates one day, yes a conclusion that the courts were not able to deduce.
For the first time in 2008, I sat and listened to the life story of one the prisoners who was there for prostitution. I used to hate her and look down on her. I hated the vile language she used and how she had lured young girls into her profession. When I used to pass her in the corridor I refused to look at her; I hated the way she walked, the way she ate even the way she slept. I hated everything about her. Even while she was in prison she was looking for new girls to recruit, because she knew soon she would be freed and would have to return to that awful profession. I looked at her like a vile, wild animal. It turned out that one day circumstances put me in a position that I got to sit with her and listen to her story. I will call her by a pseudo name: Mina M.
In 1979, as the revolution happened Mina was going to grade school. Her father had a hard time feeding his family as he had odd, seasonal jobs like shoveling snow. He left for the city of Bandar Abbas to find a job. While he was gone and the family was waiting for him to send money, the poor mother resorted to stealing food from small stores to feed her children; all in the hopes that the father will return with some money. But he never returned. Mina had two brothers and one sister. Soon the mother could not provide for schooling and Mina had to stop going to school. She would see her mother leave the house every day at sun down like clockwork. Soon her older sister started following her mother. Mina would find out the true significance of sun set.
I am Reyhaneh and I know that environment and family can influence a person’s path outside that person’s control. I know that without knowing the situation inside and out one cannot sit in judgement of another. I learned from speaking with Mina that if anyone was put in her situation they would turn out exactly like her. I realized no one in her situation could have escaped selling herself. Unless one day as they were being slaves to others, they deeply and truly wanted to escape and then a door may have opened for them to flee. Mina told me everything about her profession. She said that as soon a woman of the night is all dried up, she is tossed away like garbage with contempt. Either she is killed by someone or she kills herself. Rarely do prostitutes die a natural death or live a long, natural life.
Mina told me that her mother worked her sister and herself to death, forcing them to sell their bodies so that her two brothers could have a good, easy life. Mina hated her mother for putting such a difference between the boys and the girls. She hated her brothers. Maybe she even hated her only son who was a product of rape and only 17 years younger than her. Her son demanded that her mother still provide for him even while she was in prison! Mina told me about the first time she was “sold” to a middle aged man by a corrupt, criminal man who took part of her mother and sister’s earnings. She remembered wailing and begging for them to let her be. She was 12 and was raped. She said after that anytime she was with a man her face would be soaked in tears. She would curse her parents while she trembled and wished for death. But after a while it all became normal to her to a degree that she learned how to use special tricks to enslave other girls into the profession. I realized that the victims become the hunters after they lost all hope and start hunting for their own pray. Girls like young Mahsa, who was raped by her crack addict brother from the time she 12 years old until she was 16. She was in prison now in a Ward dubbed “flower buds”. She tried to kill herself many times even in front of people she would take broken glass and cut her wrists. Had it not been for a few kind hearted prisoners she would had died. Neesha was another young girl in prison. After her parents divorced neither wanted her. She was six and went to live with her grandmother where she was beaten and humiliated repeatedly. She was raped by her uncle many times until she was 15 so she decided to run away from that situation—a noble and right thing to do. Neesha went to live with a friend where she met a man named Ali offered to pay for her to go to beauty school. Everything was going well for Neesha until Ali introduced her to Tina—a drug addict. So this runaway who was raped by her uncle became addicted to drugs. Ali let her go but she had nowhere to go. She lived in public toilets of city parks. Sad thing is predators are not only the rapists but the police and park authorities are also predators. Out of hunger she ended up selling drugs for Tina to clients in order to survive and the end is clear. Prison.
I, Reyaenh, have a question. Where can these girls turn to when they are sexually threatened, harassed and enslaved? To whom do they turn? The government, organizations or normal citizens? Who is available to help them? I am reminded of Soheila Ghaderi [old cellmate] who lived on the street for 13 years. No easy task while being beaten. What happens to girls who are raped and become pregnant as a result? They will either have to have an abortion in rather unsanitary way or like Soheila they feel the maternal instinct and decide to have the baby just to give birth on the street bleeding and in pain. Just to have the child and realize there is no way to take of it and nowhere that their baby belongs—no way to feed it, no future, no support. So they end up killing their baby as Soheila did. Then suddenly all the organizations and people who were invisible and unavailable to these women appear out of nowhere blaming her, damning her and pointing fingers. She is arrested, prosecuted and the noose awaits her. Reporters keep on scribbling without knowing. The authorities keep on speaking like commanders in battle. No one looks into what happened or why these women turned out the way they did. Is there no one there to ask what really happened in their lives? The society keeps on reading books….The truth is that society creates a stigma around these women but never asks what could have happened to a young girl so that she started selling her body or why she became homeless on the street? They do not ask if they had a hand in their fates or if they could have done something.
I am Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26. I shall carry the burden of their stories with me. I feel responsible and sad that I had to learn all of this in prison from the women themselves. Maybe I can do my share now to help them by shedding light on their plights. The fact is no woman will start selling her body unless she has been raped. I have felt the fear of rape first hand. Sarbandi was no different than Mahsa’s brother or Neesha’s uncle. I trusted his fatherly face. But he had other plans for me. But our cold hearted laws defends the man in cases of rape. A man cannot understand the crushed, devastated soul of a girl after she has been raped nor can he understand her frozen, shocked mind and body when she is in the hands of an aroused man who wants to rape her. How can a man feel the disgust the woman feels when the rapist’s hands touch her body? The laws are written from the perspective of men. There are kind and supportive men in society but those men are not the ones who have written the laws regarding rape.
When I was 21 years old, I realized that my defending myself against rape from Sarbandi did not sit well with the courts. Without listening to my story, my lawyer and my defense and what had actually happened that day, they started to prosecute me in court. The sessions lasted only one hour, most just minutes and I was asked only one question. I soon gave up on the courts. Anytime I heard my name called on the PA system to appear in court for the next morning, I only dreamt of being free on the streets among normal, random people. The presiding judge, Tardasti, would speak to me with such hate and intimidating tone in his voice. In one session he went so far to tell me that I should have let Sarbandi rape me and then filed a complaint later .Every question was asked of me with a tone as if I was from a ring of prostitutes—his remarks were so humiliating that my ears burned from hearing them and I would be so ashamed that I would start to sweat.
I knew my parents were just outside the courtroom and I only hoped they could not hear my humiliation. I just hoped that I had not brought such shame to them. They always came accompanied by the authorities. They always brought me food and even sometimes my mother would bring me her home cooking—meals that I could no longer eat in good conscience without sharing with other prisoners. I wanted them to have some small pleasure such a home cooked meal. My parents wanted to donate meat to the prison kitchen but the prison does not accept donations of meat. I was shocked why these rules denied poor prisoners from some simple pleasure like a good meal.
I am Reyhaneh, 26 and I am living just a few steps away from death—a death that Judge Tardasti created for me. I am not afraid of death as I have lived through things much worse than death…but what I cannot tolerate is the injustice I have been treated with which onto itself is worse than death itself……
A good article: Reyhaneh Jabbari lives on – even today Follow me: https://plus.google.com/u/0/115000766128351373575 Freedom4Iran @FreeIransyria
