On the day of her wedding, Bahareh Hedayat should have been enjoying the crazed preparations for the celebration. Instead, the Iranian student activist was arrested by plain-clothed police officers and has spent the last decade being arrested, imprisoned and silenced.
Bahareh never had the traditional Iranian wedding ceremony. She never had a wedding day. Instead, she and her husband, student activist Amin Ahmadian, simply moved in together. But it hasn’t been an easy start to “married” life: Bahareh was arrested again and remains in prison despite being due for release. As a result of her ongoing imprisonment, the couple have spent less than a year together in their seven years of marriage.
Bahareh found herself on the wrong side of the Iranian Government’s attentions when she became a founding member of the One Million Signatures campaign, a grassroots initiative to end legal discrimination against women in Iran. She is also a member of the Central Committee of the Office for the Consolidation of Unity, a national student body which has been active in calling for political reform and opposing human rights violations in recent years.
Her human rights work was cut short, however, when she was arrested on December 31, 2009. She was charged with several “offences” related to her criticism of the newly elected government.
Bahareh’s sentencing was extensive: in May 2010 she was sentenced to six months in prison for insulting the then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, two years for insulting the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and five years for gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security. A two-year suspended prison term previously imposed for her participation in the June 2006 demonstration calling for an end to discrimination against women in law was also implemented. An additional six-month sentence was added as punishment for having written a letter, together with fellow imprisoned student activist Majid Tavakkoli, in December 2010, encouraging students to continue their peaceful struggle for freedom.
Bahareh has now served half of her 10-year sentence in Evin Prison and is eligible for parole under Iranian law. Her release orders were issued on August 12 but the 33 year old was held in prison illegally until, on August 17, orders for enforcement of a further two-year prison sentence were issued.
Amin was distraught to find he would not see his wife outside of prison for another two years. He argues the additional two-year sentence was a vindictive decision that should have been, at the very least, pursued and forwarded to the Sentence Enforcement Unit during her prison term rather than the ad hoc process that was applied.
Amnesty isn’t the only organisation appalled at Bahareh’s situation and fighting for her release – the pressure is coming from all corners. In September, 30 leading university professors – including Noam Chomsky – signed an open letter urging Iran’s president and its chief of judiciary to release Bahareh. But again the cries are falling on deaf ears.
Not an isolated case
Bahareh is held at the women’s ward at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison where female prisoners do not have access to a telephone.
Bahareh has kidney complications and reproductive health issues, according to her husband, and no access to medical care. Amin has pleaded with her not to go on a hunger strike (“she has already endured six years in jail, that’s enough,” he says) but if she is not released she is adamant it is her only way to take action.
Unfortunately, Bahareh’s story is far from unique. An estimated 18 women considered to be prisoners of conscience are held at Evin prison, including Bahareh. Of those, 10 are mothers and four have children under the age of 10.
The human rights defender Narges Mohammadi, a vocal advocate against the death penalty in Iran, is languishing in Evin prison with a number of medical issues. On August 1, she suffered partial paralysis and was taken to Taleghani Hospital. Although doctors advised that she needed to be examined by a specialist, she was returned to prison the very next day.
As well as being denied urgent medical care, Narges is not allowed to make phone calls to her children, eight-year-old twins who recently moved to live with their father, a refugee abroad, as they had no caregiver in Iran.
These two women’s stories are just a snapshot of an Iranian judicial landscape that shows a flagrant disregard for individuals’ right to free speech. Their stories as prisoners of conscience are tragic and galling but, sadly, not unusual.
