IWAC – Zhina Modarress, Gorji, Kurdish journalist, book-seller, women’s rights activist, social and cultural activist; in line with the spread and continuation of the mass protests to the state-murder of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, on Sept. 21, 2022, she was arrested with battery and terrorization of the security forces of the intelligence division of IRGC in Safari St. of Sanandaj, Kurdistan; she was transferred to a detention house and after the completion of the persecutions and the arraignment of her charges, she was transferred to Sanandaj central correctional facility. During the days leading up to her arrest, she had been frequently threatened to be arrested by the security forces both by phone contact and in person, at the bookstore where she worked, and had been told that she would be arrested in case of participating in the protests. Moreover, in the course of the persecutions enforced in the intelligence division, she was under pressure to falsely confess being affiliated with oppositional individuals and groups outside Iran and the charge made against her was “collusion and conspiracy against national security.” According to reports of human rights news agencies of Iran on Sept. 25, 2022, Zhina Moddarress Gorji, along with Zara (Zahra) Muhammadi and some other female political prisoners of this correctional facility in Sanandaj went on a hunger strike in protest to the improper conduct of the prison authorities with the arrestees of the current mass protests and with the demand of their unconditional release. However, on Oct. 30, 2023, and after 40 days of detention, she was temporarily released from this correctional facility on bail and until the termination of legal proceedings. From among her activities, one can refer to her emphatic attention to the question of violence against women, women’s sexual amputation, and the necessity of following up on “femicide” cases which are announced terminated without due persecutions and interrogations deemed as “suicide” or “self-immolation,” especially in Kurdish regions of Iran. In addition, she has been one of the collaborators of the One-Million-Signature Campaign [a feminist campaign founded in Iran on 2006 for promoting human rights and frequently with its mostly woman members suppressed by the regime in the course of its activities]; however, recently, she posted an account of her court hearing with regard to the so-called “public pardon” by the judiciary for political prisoners and, given its telling significance, it is mentioned in what fallows verbatim: “My court was held on Feb. 14, 2023. When, on Thursday, my lawyer, Mr. Abdollahi, had attended the court for the final viewing of my case, he realized that my judge has been changed from Mr. Saidi, chaired at the 1sth division of Sanandaj Revolutionary Court to Mr. Akbari, the head of Sanandaj Ministry of Justice following a direct order issued form Tehran. The court was held; Judge Abari had not reviewed my case yet and had just started flipping through it. More than being a court session, it was a session of exhortation and event analysis, from his perspective, of course; at the end, he said: “I will go through your case later, but, for now, you’d better write your defense statement regarding the charge of “propaganda against the regime.” I and my lawyer composed the statement. Eventually, they handed me over the Pardon Form in which it was read: “I (blank( Father (blank), case no. (blank), am regretful and repentant of the crime I have committed. I hereby guarantee such acts not to be repeated and stay in line with the Islamic Republic of Iran’s objectives (or something to that effect since I cannot remember the content word-by-word). However, I did not sign the form since I told the judge that I considered myself no criminal to be regretful and repentant for and, by law, in the present state am charged and not yet convicted. He insisted for a number of times for me to sign it since it would do well to my case and I insisted back on not being convicted yet. He said I’d demonized the regime, by my reports, writings, acts and deeds, photos I exhibited in galleries, and even by the title of books I recommend my customers to buy and read. They were all included in my case. “We know people are in hard times, especially economically, yet this was not the solution and if had not managed to wrap it up [meaning, succeeding in crackdown], we would have become a second Syria by now,” he stated. He said he would go through my case and issue the verdict on the basis of my defense statement. These days, there is a lot of conversation over the question of whether signing the pardon form. After my lawyers’ explanations, I realized that the pardon is not elective but mandatory for those [political] convicts who have already served a determined part of their sentence. They did not sign any form and were released, but it is selective for the defendants. I think we can’t judge the arrestees based on whether having signed this form or not. I’ve met many with such life conditions that they could not even burden one bit of any further pressure or costs. Moms with very young children; people suffering from severe traumas; a young homosexual boy afraid of being harassed (even if mentally) at men’s ward; people suffering from depression, physical diseases and the like. Neither the one who signs it is a betraying lost cause! Nor a hero the one who signs it not! Mind the divisions.”
