This article is adapted from my book, "Broken yet beautiful: Rising up from their ashes." It is originally written by Mehnoush my dear Iranian friend living in Sweden. Golrokh is Mehnoush's hero, a courageous Iranian woman who refuses to be silent even while suffering in prison.
The
theme of our book is that beauty comes from brokenness. Women have suffered
immensely for thousands of years and have been broken yet remained strong. From
this brokenness has emerged a defiant spirit that has been rejuvenated, rising
up from the ashes of suffering to confront the cancer eating away at their
dignity and self-worth. One such survivor is a woman that I admire greatly for
her courage and determination to not remain silent but to rise up against a
dictatorship government. That survivor is Golrokh Iraee.
Golrokh is a writer and a political
activist serving a six-year sentence for charges related to an unpublished
story she wrote criticizing the practice of stoning in Iran. Golrokh was
arrested on September 6, 2014 along with her husband Arash Sadeghi, who also is
a committed political activist.
After their arrest, authorities
violently ransacked the couple’s home without a search warrant. They
confiscated personal possessions such as laptops, CDs, and papers. Among the
papers was a notebook that Golrokh used as a personal diary. The diary
contained a fictional handwritten story in which a female character watches the
Stoning of Saraya M, a 2009
Persian-language film depicting the true story of a woman stoned to death for
adultery in Iran.
Golrokh was interrogated about the
contents of the diary and her story. During her initial interrogation, she was
repeatedly pressured to confess under the threat of execution. She was
questioned in a room adjoining the location where her husband was detained and
she could hear him being tortured through the walls. Golrokh was placed in
solitary confinement for three days and endured twenty days without access to a
family lawyer or court proceeding.
Golrokh was convicted in May 2015. She
was charged with “insulting Islamic
sanctities” for the diary entry and spreading
propaganda against the system for two separate Facebook posts as well as
possession of alleged anti-government propaganda in her home. She was convicted
in absentia and sentenced to six years in prison. Her husband Arash, on the
other hand, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of spreading propaganda against the system
for interviews he conducted about human rights issues and prison conditions. In
addition to the charges he was also convicted of spreading lies in Cyberspace for Facebook posts about political
prisoners and insulting the Supreme
leader of the Islamic Republic
.
Golrokh continues to speak out publicly
to protest the Iranian government from her jail cell. She has written several
open letters from prison, including one in which she refused to participate in
the May 2017 presidential election, criticizing a staged tour of Evin prison
for foreign ambassadors.
In January 2018, Golrokh faced
additional charges for allegedly insulting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and
reciting a political poem. She was subsequently beaten by prison guards and
transferred to Shahr-e-Rey prison after she refused to go to court. In February
2018 she began a hunger strike which seriously impacted her health and in April
she was transferred to the hospital in critical condition.
*Update on Arash Sadeghi....
Arash is suffering from bone cancer and the Iranian authorities are denying him adequate medical care. Please speak out and keep Arash in your thoughts and prayers!
