SHIMA SHAHRABI - What do the Revolutionary Guards Have Against my Daughter?
When Masoumeh Nemati
answers the telephone, I introduce myself. I say I’m calling for an interview.
“I was waiting for the phone to ring,” she says, her voice sounding strange.
“Atena calls on Saturdays. I thought it was Atena.” For the last 15 days,
the imprisoned civil rights activist Atena
Daemi, who is serving a seven-year prison sentence for her human rights
work, has refused to eat. Her mother, Masoumeh Nemati, is determined to make
sure her daughter’s story is told. “Last Sunday when we went to visit her
she had lost five kilos. She must have lost more than ten kilos by now. What
else can happen to somebody who has lived on sugar water for 15 days?”
If Atena’s story gets
out to the world, Nemati says, maybe authorities will listen, and maybe
her 29-year old daughter will break her hunger strike. “I worked hard to bring
up my child,” she says, “and now she is melting away right before my eyes.” Daemi, who is detained
at Evin Prison’s Women’s Ward, has been on a hunger strike since April 8. Her
strike is a protest against a verdict — but not her own. She is protesting
because of the verdict brought against her two sisters, Aniseh and
Hanieh. In March, Branch 1163
of the Qods Criminal Court in Tehran issued a suspended 91-day sentence to
Aniseh and Hanieh Daemi following a complaint by the Revolutionary Guards, who
accused them of “resisting agents carrying out their duty” and “insulting
agents while on duty.”
Psychological
Torture: Insisting that the
verdict is unjust, Daemi wrote an open letter to judicial authorities on April 8.
She said she would continue her hunger strike until her sisters are acquitted
of the charges. “I will not let the security agencies trample their own laws
and abuse our families as a means of psychological torture to create a climate
of fear,” she wrote. Daemi, a defender of
the rights of working children, was first arrested on
October 21, 2014. The Revolutionary Guards held her for several months in
“temporary detention” and in solitary confinement at Evin Prison in Tehran. On
March 7, 2016,
Daemi stood trial on charges of “conspiracy against national
security,” “propaganda against the regime,” “insulting the Supreme Leader and
the sacred,” and “concealing evidence of a crime.”
According to a source quoted by
the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, all charges against Daemi
were based on her Facebook posts, information stored on her phone, and her
participation in gatherings to oppose the death penalty and to support the
children of Kobane in Syria.
In the lower court,
Judge Mohammad Moghiseh – a man the European Union has accused of violating defendants’ human rights –
sentenced Daemi to 14 years in prison. The sentence was consolidated by the
appeals court and converted to a seven-year sentence based on the Penal Code of
the Islamic Republic. (Under Article 134 of the Penal Code, some sentences can
be served simultaneously.) After 16 months in
detention, she was released on bail. In November 2016, she was instructed to
begin serving her sentence. “I am worried about my family but I am staying the
course that I have chosen,” she told IranWire.
“This choice was not easy for me to make, but I have made my decision.”
Masked Agents, No
Warrant: On November 26, 2016,
Revolutionary Guards agents arrived at her home without notice and forcefully
transported Daemi to Evin Prison. “When they contacted us and told us that her
furlough was over and she had to start serving her sentence we contacted her
lawyer,” says Daemi’s mother. “He said that we had at least five days after
being informed. Her father and I went on a trip, but two days before she was to
start her sentence, Revolutionary Guards agents came to our home. They forced
their way in without showing a warrant or any ID. They had covered their faces
as well. In such a situation it is only logical for family members to
intervene. Atena’s sisters called 110 [the police]. Words were exchanged and a
clash followed; one agent used pepper spray.”
After the ordeal,
Aniseh and Hanieh Daemi and Hanieh’s husband Hossein Fatemi were summoned to
the office of Evin’s Prosecutor. Fatemi was released without charge, but Aniseh
and Hanieh were charged and released on a bail of around $12,000. When the court
announced its verdict against her sisters, Atena Daemi first staged a sit-in
next to the prison guards’ office for four days and three nights. She announced
that she would go on a hunger strike if she did not receive a response to
her demand. “We repeatedly went to Evin and talked to Assistant Prosecutor Mr.
Haji Moradi,” says Masoumeh Nemati. “‘Please tell Atena not to go on hunger strike,’
I told him. ‘Convince her that you will review her demand.’ He promised to
pursue the matter but he did not go himself. He sent the deputy prison head to
see Atena and he told her that what she was doing was illegal and she could be
sentenced for the sit-in. ‘You should have left Iran when you were out on
bail,’ he told her. ‘People like you are hypocrites and turncoats.’”
“Private”
Plaintiffs: Atena Daemi's family
members have appealed to judiciary officials, members of parliament, government
officials and other authorities in an effort to bring an end to her hunger
strike. But she continues her protest, and cannot be persuaded otherwise. “The
only thing that they had to say,” says Atena’s mother Masoumeh Nemati, was that
“the plaintiff in your daughters’ case is not the Revolutionary Guard [Corps]
itself but their agents,’ meaning that the plaintiffs are private individuals.
I really don’t know what the Guards have against my daughter. Isn’t it the
Guards’ duty to guard the country? Then what do they have against the people?”
According to Nemati,
the Daemi family has filed a complaint against the Revolutionary Guards’ agents
but to no avail. “Atena has complained against them and so has her father after
the clash, but they have completely disregarded the complaints.” On April 21, Masoumeh
Nemati wrote an open letter to Asma Jahangir, UN Special Rapporteur for Human
Rights in Iran, explaining her daughter’s situation and describing her
condition. She appealed to Jahangir to help save her daughter.
“Atena called on
Tuesday,” she says. “She told her sister, ‘I cannot stand. I feel faint, my
heart is beating too fast and my blood pressure is low.’ She suffers from
infection in her digestive system and kidneys. We are worried sick. Not only
can we not eat anything, we can’t breathe either.”
“May god save any
mother from going through this,” Nemati says, her voice broken.
https://iranwire.com/en/features/4565
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