Below is a letter posted by prisoner Golrokh Iraee on her social media platforms on January 1, 2025. Translation and bracketed additions are by IEC volunteers.
Until a moment ago, she was by your side. You would have been drinking tea together and walking side-by-side in the dreary prison evening. Then she is gone suddenly and forever, never to return. This is the most bitter reality of prison. They come and snatch one of us, and kill her. Sometimes they return her lifeless body to her family, sometimes not.
The suffering of prison is not because of the walls or the endless futility that never loosens its grip, but from the constant dread that shadows each tedious night: that this night that may be her last, and your hands are tied. The guards will come to take her away, the doors slamming one by one, her voice growing dimmer until it is lost to you. On the last night of her life, sitting or standing, she will wait for the morning call to prayer and the sunrise that will be her sunset.
The anguish of prison is heightened and given new meaning when you see your cellmate sent to the gallows. This kind of suffering changes you, it tears open your soul and toughens you, so nothing can make you tired, nothing can slow you down. You are dissatisfied with anything less than actual liberation. You become a link what my comrades call the chain of free people, the chain forged from the resistance of friends who continued to cry out for liberation, despite the boots and blows of the dictatorships of Shah and Sheikh [the Mullahs].
From the beginning, the Islamic Republic wanted to incapacitate its opponents. It banned the activities of political parties and took over newspapers. It left society without a backbone and extinguished the pulse of its life. The path of revolution was bent toward Khavaran [hidden gravesite of thousands executed in secret in the 1980s], creating the fault-line on which we stand today.
The Struggle Continues and Resistance Becomes Life Itself
Two weeks my arrival at Qarchak Prison in 2018, Fatemeh Ghezel and Narges Tabatabaei were taken from the [women’s] ward to solitary confinement to await the execution of their death sentences. We lost two people from the ward’s group of 90. I didn’t know these two very well. They had taken Fatemeh secretly, and I arrived just as they were taking Narges [Tabatabsu]. She was crying as she comforted the children. [The prisoners affectionately call one another “the children”.]
She wanted to console the children, even as she was about to go to her death. She said she accepted the situation and was not afraid of anything. She told them not to cry when she was gone, to be happy after she left and to listen to [the music station on the] radio that evening, as though it was just another day. They took Narges away. We could hardly see the solitary confinement door through a small window. A few hours later, they were taken from solitary confinement through the back door and transferred to Gohardasht Prison in Karaj. In the morning, we were informed that they had been executed.
At that time in Gharchak Prison, the children of the ward were allowed to listen to songs on the radio for [only] one hour on weekdays. Weekends, it was one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. Dancing was forbidden. But even though they called out [our] names in a commanding and threatening tone, we had broken the atmosphere and the children kept disobeying the orders of the officers. Ghezel and Narges were gone, but for a long time, we continued to relive the happy moments when we had been together. Once, later on, when one of Ghezel’s favorite songs was playing, one of the children began to dance like Ghezel. Some were crying and some wanted to continue dancing.
We are in a prison that has seen more than 20 executions. Along with the hardships of Qarchak prison that many of us have experienced, we have also shared memorable moments with many of the children have been sentenced to death, including with Samira Sabzbanha, who had the shadow of death hanging over her head and fear in her heart, but did not forget that these days spent in prison are also a part of the days our lives. So you try to live it in the best way possible.
In 2021, after about a year of being my roommate for about a year, Masoumeh Zare'i was taken to Amol Prison to be executed. They gave Masoumeh a last visit with her 17-year-old daughter a few days before the sentence was to be executed. She had not seen her daughter for about two years, and she was never going to see her again. In the last days, Masoumeh planned a party to console the children of the prison, who had been hiding their tears from her.
The women's ward of Amol prison was just two simple rooms. With the permission of the prison guard, the prisoners got one hour a day of music - happy songs that had copied onto a flash drive by the prison warden on for prisoners to play under the supervision of the prison guard.
But the day that Masoumeh met with her daughter, no one had thought to get the flash drive. After she met with her daughter, Masoumeh entered the room -- with the flash drive! It was just a few days before she was to be executed, and some of the children trying to hide their tears. But with indescribable passion, she pulled the children out of their beds. A few minutes later, everyone was in the middle of the room for a few minutes forgot everything, even their tears. Mazandarani songs [of an ethnicity native to the north of Iran, near the Caspian Sea] were playing. Masoumeh was not from the north, but she danced “Dream Mir” along with the others, saying that she had learned it from other children in prison. On that day, we had more music than usual. At the height of our grief, everyone was happy.
A few days later, in the evening, Masoumeh was taken out of the ward. We stayed up with Maria and Solmaz until morning, when she was taken to Amol Prison for to be executed. Just a short distance away from us, she was hanged in front of her daughter's eyes. From behind the walls, we could hear the screams of Masoumeh's teenage daughter, longing to pull the rope off of her mother.
Masoumeh is gone, but her steadfastness in the last days of her life was a great lesson for all of us. Though she had no hope of reprieve, after seven years of imprisonment in exile and away from her child, she started every one of her final days with a campaign [to strengthen and cheer the others. On one of her last days she shocked me by saying, “Golrokh, I am sure that I will be executed soon. Maria and Soraya are also sentenced to retribution (execution) like me. Don't let them be scared or sad after I am gone. Instead, tell them the reason I am leaving is to get a consent [decree].” Just three days later, the usual routine. [She was executed.]
This is the first time, since Shirin Alam Holi, that the Evin Women’s Ward has two inmates on death row. Pakshan Azizi and Varishe Moradi, whose sentences have been issued, and Nasima Islam Zahi, (who has one baby in prison and another child who was handed over to the family after a year and a half in welfare custody), is in danger of receiving a worrying sentence.
Pakhshan and Varisheh came to the general ward last year after months of solitary confinement. After a few days in the general population, they entered the [women’s ward] and transformed the mood of the prison. They made Kurdish headscarves for the children and held Kurdish dance classes. They celebrated the [Kurdish] holidays and talked about the resistance in the areas where struggles is the custom and ritual of its people's life. They talked about living in the mountains, and working in the refugee camps. They spoke of war-stricken children and women who had survived ISIS attacks. They spoke of the intensity of storms that blew down tens, of confrontation with the forces of ISIS of being scared to death each time. They spoke of the deaths of their comrades, which was perhaps the most bitter part of their narratives.
A few months ago, their sentences for the most severe punishment were issued. But they did not let those sentences interfere with their daily routines and their relationships with fellow prisoners. They are present in all the collective programs of our band [of activists], by their stand, and their actions, they have restored and strengthened the resistance of our little band. On the day Reza Rasai was executed, we protested together against his execution, and after that, for days on end, we chanted slogans together in the prison yard and demanding “Stop the Executions”.
Every time there was suffering, we stood hand in hand and every time there was a protest, we walked together. We spread the table together and paved the way for the campaign together.
Even in high security prisons, the repressive atmosphere can be broken. Although it is difficult, we can overcome everything that should not be, but is, and make an effort to provide everything that should be, but is not. Of course, prisoners do this in their own way, not by softening the stance against the security force
Many of us were imprisoned for months and years in different prisons in the most difficult conditions and in exile.
Zainab Jalalian has been in prison and in exile [far from her home in Kurdistan] for 17 years. For many years, it was not possible for her to have visitors due to the distance from her family. She is rarely sent for medical care, and is deprived of many of the usual prisoners’ rights.
Maryam Akbari Monfared was deported from Evin women's prison to Semnan prison about five years ago. Three months ago she was transferred to Qarchak Prison, in Varamin. At the time she was arrested 15 years ago, Maryam was put in Gohardasht Karaj and Qarchak prisons in Varamin, and from there she was transferred to Evin. Her daughters grew up while Maryam was in exile, and their memories of their mother at home are from many years ago.
Narges Mohammadi was imprisoned for many years in Farchak Zanjan prisons and in various detention centers, she was deprived of living with her children and her health was endangered in prison
In addition to being detained in punishing conditions, Athena Daemi was also imprisoned in Qarchak and Lakan Rasht prisons, and experienced imprisonment in exile.
The conditions of various prisons and detention centers are different. In Qarchak prison, the children were beaten and locked in solitary confinement for the smallest objection. The food was inadequate and of poor quality. Fruits and vegetables could not be found in sufficient quantity except at certain times. Wearing some kinds of clothing was prohibited, and there were zero amenities. But we found the ways to overcome these obstacles and to teach each other.
In Amol Prison, for punishment in the women's prison, people were handcuffed to a bar with their hands raised for hours, exposed to the cold or the hot sun. In the prisons of that, there were no proper libraries and food was a problem.
In some detention centers, television was available during limited hours, and in some places, there was nothing to pass the time except the four walls and a few blankets. Sometimes many consecutive days passed without interrogation. In some detention centers, such as “Viza” and “Shapur”, even a glass of water had to be brought from outside the cell when needed. It was in these detention centers that many were tortured and raped, and many were killed in the past. Even now dozens of people are being taken to the gallows on various charges (murder, illicit material [drugs], robbery, political, ideological, etc.) —some after enduring years in solitary confinement, some after a short period of detention.
The conditions of prisons are different. But what is important is the children's resistance, which always continues in the absence of amenities and in spite of many difficulties. When the opportunities present themselves, they use they find a way to make the best use of them. And, they have learned well that they should not give up under any circumstance.
They got used to difficult conditions in prison, and to the atmosphere of struggle. They know very well that, at the height of hardships and in an environment where suffering and sorrow fall like rain, you must look for the positive side of what is possible. The secret to standing against what looks like nothing but destruction is greater solidarity and the practice of resistance. During years of living in the environment of security prisons and in forced coexistence with the [prison administration] that rains down endless repression, I have come to believe that we cannot be satisfied with anything less than the downfall of the oppressor. What we see going on today reflects the desperation of the servants of religious and royal tyranny.
The conditions of struggle are not always the same for all of us, but the important thing is that our resistance is of the same kind…that it is like that of the ‘Golsorkhi’s * who refused to bow down to the regime’s courts, and put the defending the [interests of the] people ahead of defending themselves.
Golrokh Iraee
Evin Prison
*Khosrow Golsorkhi was a revolutionary, and communist who famously denounced the regime and upheld the peoples during his 1974 trial, before being executed by the Shah’s firing squad. He is regarded as a hero, and through the years his fierce resistance has been emulated by other revolutionaries who similarly are affectionately known as "Golsorkhis".
