For
most of us who live in the West, making a daily post on Facebook is a freedom
and a luxury that we take for granted. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, there
is no such freedom and luxury. First of all, Facebook is banned and for an
Iranian to log into his account, he must first use VPN to bypass the filter.
However, the President and Supreme Leader have no such restrictions. They have
active Facebook accounts that they use on a daily basis. The hypocrisy is very
obvious. If you are an active member of the government, then Facebook is not
illegal for you.
In November of 2013,
Soheil Arabi logged onto his Facebook account. Like many other Iranian bloggers,
he was zealous to speak out against the government. He had a few things to say
about his disdain for the religion of Islam. Facebook would become his platform
to speak his mind that day. It wasn’t long after his post, that the Cyber
police, who monitor the activities of Iranians on Facebook, came across his
post. Soheil was immediately arrested and charged with “insulting the prophet,”
and being critical of the government. The charge of insulting the prophet
carried with it the death penalty, but after months of intense pressure from
the international community, the sentence was dropped. The new charges against
Soheil resulted in seven and one half years in prison, two years of
religious studies to prove his repentance, and a two-year ban from traveling
abroad.
In August of 2017, Soheil began a hunger strike, protesting
the harassment and detention of his wife, Nastaran. Six days later, he broke the
strike, after his wife was finally released from IRGC detention to answer
accusations regarding contacts with the foreign media. However in a letter from
prison on August 24, Soheil resummed his hunger strike after discovering that
his wife and relatives continued to be harrassed. In his letter from prison,
Soheil explained the desperation of his situation:
“Our phones are tapped,
online accounts are hacked, relatives are threatened and my wife is
interrogated and persecuted. Stop torturing and harassing my love. It is all my
fault. Yes, I am to blame."
Soheil was outraged because of the tactics of the IRGC
(Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) creating websites and publishing slander and
lies about him. Both he and his wife had filed a formal complaint to put an end
to their tactics. The IRGC had threatened to also put Nastaran in prison.
Arash Sadeghi and Golrokh
Iraee are very close friends with Soheil. Speaking out on his behalf, Golrokh
wrote an open letter calling into question the legitimacy of his arrest and
demanding his immediate release.
“Soheil has been behind
bars for years without having committed a crime! He is held captive by a
vengeful system that has no tolerance for dissenting views.”
Golrokh went on to explain, “Soheil was first detained on
a misunderstanding that devolved into a blasphemy charge. After spending years
behind bars and nearing the end of his sentence, they tore his family apart and
now another case file emerges, and yet another prison sentence is leveled
against him. After compounding his suffering with a ban on visits from his
daughter, they now want to do with him what they did with Ajang Davoudi and Gholamreza
Kalbi, exile him to the middle of nowhere, remove him from public memory, and
let his existence perish onto the abyss.
In a desperate effort to get him out of prison, Soheil’s
mother, Farangis, began working very
hard behind the scenes and was eventually imprisoned for a few months and then
released on bail. Farangis ironically is one of Mehnoush Bakhtiari’s friends.
She has informed Soheil of Mehnoush’s human rights activities on his behalf and
he responded with overwhelming gratitude. Long hours of interrogation, hunger
strikes, tortures, and beatings has been the horrible daily experience for
Soheil. His interrogators have spared no mercy. They crushed one of his
testicles and prevented him from being transferred to the hospital in order to
continue their torture.
The next time that you log
into your Facebook account and freely speak your mind on a post, remember Soheil
Arabi. He is no different from you. His desire was to also speak his mind
and he has severely paid for it!
