VIEW: Evil Guantanamo, but what about Evin

Rafia Zakaria:

The world is by now painfully familiar with images from Guantanamo. In a widely circulated image men clad in orange jumpsuits huddle in metal cages, shackled and bound on the floor of a barbed-wire cage. In another, an inmate is seen cowering in fear while a guard threatens him with a menacing dog.

Since its establishment in 2002, nearly 775 detainees have been held captive at Guantanamo and approximately 430 still remain there. In 2005, over 200 detainees participated in a hunger strike at the camp to protest their indefinite detention without trial. According to Amnesty International, the hunger strikers were reportedly placed in isolation cells, strapped into restraint chairs, subjected to painful force-feeding and deprived of personal belongings. Just this past Thursday, May 31, 2007 a Saudi inmate committed suicide, becoming the seventh inmate known to have killed himself in the prison.
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Stories of the atrocities of Guantanamo have echoed far and wide in the Muslim world. In cities like Amman, Karachi, Cairo and Kabul one would be hard pressed to find a person who has not heard of the notorious prison in Guantanamo or is unwilling to condemn the grotesque violations of human rights that are taking place there. Despite its geographical distance, Guantanamo and the images of its persecuted prisoners seem to have etched themselves in the minds of Muslims and become the subject of much condemnation.

However, Guantanamo Bay Prison in Cuba is hardly the only place home to cruel atrocities carried out with impunity. *Evin prison, located north of Tehran, is the sordid site where hundreds of Iranian human rights activists, philosophers, journalists and student leaders are being imprisoned under chilling and ghastly conditions. Section 209 of the prison, reserved for political prisoners is run by the Iranian ministry of intelligence and used to house anyone accused of opposing the regime. So secret is the prison that one journalist Zahra Kazemi was found beaten to death by Iranian authorities for having attempted to take pictures of the facility in 2003.

In recent weeks, Iranian authorities have put scores of journalists, student leaders and activists in Evin. One such person is the scholar Haleh Esfandiari, a 67-year-old academic who went to Iran from the United States to visit her aged mother. On her way to Tehran airport, she was accosted by masked gunmen who stopped the taxi in which she was travelling and took her away to be questioned by the ministry of intelligence at Evin.

In March of this year, 35 female university professors, lawyers, jurists and journalists were arrested for simply gathering in front of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran for a peaceful protest. Earlier this May, six student leaders were arrested for having written subversive articles against the government even though it is widely alleged that the articles were fabrications used by the Iranian government to crack down on student leaders.

As in the case of Guantanamo, those released from Evin tell harrowing tales of persecution and torture at the hands of Iranian authorities. Their stories are just as terrifying, if not more so than Guantanamo. One could even argue that Evin far surpasses Guantanamo in its abject immorality since the Iranian Government chooses its own citizens to persecute rather than the “combatants” imprisoned by US authorities as part of a war. Yet, despite the blatant depravities of its cruel purpose, Evin remains a seldom talked about issue in the Muslim world. While the suffering of inmates in Guantanamo get persistent and routine attention on channels such as Al-Jazeera, Geo News and others, the fate of Evin’s political prisoners, helpless at the hands of Iranian authorities, is hardly ever mentioned.

One possible explanation is the fear that in criticising the Iranian regime one could be bolstering the United States War propaganda against Iran. However many Iran commentators such as Danny Postel, an author of a book on the subject have exposed the falsity of this notion. In Postel’s words “Iranian dissidents and human rights activists are themselves opposed to a US attack on their country, so in supporting them we are in fact supporting people who stand in direct opposition to the neo-cons and to Washington’s imperial agenda”.

Despite this reality and the urgent helplessness of hapless men and women condemned to silence and persecution not a single political leader in the Muslim world has condemned the Iranian government for carrying out such horrific crimes against its own people. Cloaking its oppressive practices in the garb of religious piety, the Iranian regime seems to have convinced everyone in the Muslim world to turn a blind eye to its infractions.

Disinterested in anything that does not affirm their own self-righteousness against the West, the Muslims continue to ignore the plight of fellow Muslims whose persecutors are their own countrymen. Viewed thus, Evin represents not simply a prison but the greatest danger facing the Muslim world, the self-defeating practice of condemning only the evil without, while obstinately refusing to confront the evil within.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@gmail.com


Related articles on Evin Prison:

Prisoners of "love" by Azadeh Azad:
*Evin is a Kurdish female name, meaning "love"

Part (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

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Memoir: Horrific Condition of Women Prisoners in Evin Prison

Prisoners of "love"Evin

Evin is a Kurdish female name, meaning "love"


March 5, 2007iranian.com.

Part (1) (2) (3) (4)

Women prisoners were treated brutally and their abysmal living conditions were in violation of their Human Rights. If one prisoner committed an offence such as starting a fight inside a ward, the prison guards would punish all prisoners of that ward by depriving them of something significant such as telephone calls or visitations - the social workers simply turning a blind eye to this practice. Excessive amount of camphor was poured into prisoners’ meals and drinks – breakfast and lunch and supper, even into their bread and tea – in order to supposedly suppress their sexual drives. Too much camphor was causing side-effects such as swollen eyelids and faces, hoarse and choked voices, appearance of spots on hands and arms in women. During interviews, prisoners’ voices were hoarse and choked, and they spoke with great difficulty. Some of the inmates believed that adding camphor to their meals was good for them because it soothed them and made them numb and lethargic, helping them not to think of anything. However, we could hear from behind the wards’ doors the sound of brawls and exchange of obscene curses among inmates. Scuffling was a normal occurrence and prisoners witnessed several brawls breaking out everyday.

Inmates' nerves and emotions were played with by the staff. In fact, they were often mentally and sometimes physically tortured. For instance, every time a prisoner received a flogging with iron wire (Aatashi) in the prison office, they put loud-speakers in the four communal wards and the prisoners had no choice but to hear the woman’s screams and wailing, which made them all cry and prevented them from being able to have appetite for lunch or supper. The whippings happened in the morning or before supper. It was possible to buy the flogging in the prison. Ordinary flogging (Ta’ziri) cost 500 toumans per stroke; and severe flogging with iron wire (Aatashi) could be bought with 1000 toumans per stroke. However, most inmates were poor and could not afford buying their torture. Zahra, a 43 year-old illiterate woman from Kermanshah and mother of 6 children, who had moved to Bandar-Abbas with her second husband to sell two of her small children to a Dubai sheik, claimed that she was tortured in Evin: she was hung upside-down, her nails were pulled, and all her teeth were broken.

The bad quality of food and water routinely served had caused many prisoners to suffer from digestive disorders. The tap water was coming from a village well and had not gone through the purification process as the water of Greater Tehran. Monotony and lack of nutritional value of food had caused mal-nourishment among babies and children; and the unsanitary conditions were responsible for their many types of infections. Women prisoners did not have fruit as part of their meals, unless they worked for it or were rich. Mothers’ ration consisted of one can of dry milk per week for babies; but it was not enough. Rich mothers were able to buy more milk to compensate. Moreover, there was no nursery in the wards.

Prison officials were negligent about the inmates’ health. There was a lack of sufficient medicine in prison, and it was difficult for the prisoners to succeed in getting permission to go to the infirmary. The medicine had to be taken in front of the officials because in some cases it had been sold to other inmates. Rouhi, a 23 year-old prisoner carrying a huge goitre had spent one year in solitary confinement for fighting with other inmates, which was the result of her illness. She had been taken to a hospital for operation and while waiting, the Evin Pasdars in charge of her guard forced her to return to Evin because, they said, there was not enough staff!...more

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