IWAC – Special Report: Sepideh Gholian
Sepideh Gholian, labor activist, author, and freelance journalist from Khuzestan, was released from Evin Prison after having served four years and seven months of imprisonment on Wed. Mar. 15, 2023, and only a few hours after her release, was abducted on her way from Tehran to Dezfoul, got separated from her family, and transferred to Even prison by the security forces once more.
At the moment of her release, she published a video recorded of herself shutting slogans against the supreme leader which had been gone viral in Iran’s current protests; in a caption on that video she writes: “After four years and seven months over a syndicate case, Haft-Tappeh, I got released. This time, I got out with the hope of a free Iran! With the hope of an early release of my imprisoned dears, Sepideh Kashani, Niloufar Bayani, Zahra Zehtabchi, Bahareh Hedayat, Golrokh Irani, Nahid Taghavi and all political prisoners, especially the imprisoned women. Woman, Life, Freedom”.
In her first book, “Tilapila Slurps the Blood of Hoor-al-Azim Wetland,” she makes numberless references to torture techniques, humiliation and discrimination against young and adolescent Arab men and women in Ahwaz, who were taken hostage. In this book, she narrates the life and pains of the imprisoned Arab women at Sheyban Prison, in Ahwaz. She has also portrays ten of these women of no name in such circumstances that there was no mentioning of their names, charges, and sentences in media at all.
Last year, too, she announced having finished writing a new book on the agonies of the women imprisoned at Evin Prsion. Based on a report published on IranWire website, in her new book she is trying to articulate the situation of political prisoner women imprisoned in different prisons of Iran, by taking a different approach, and to do so, she has relied on her familiarity with pastry art. Her new book is divided to two parts; the first one applies a fictional structure to narrate the life and agonies of different women imprisoned in Iran prisons. Moreover, at the end of this part, she explains why having applied such a fictional structure in writing this part, saying that although “the stories are real,” and sometimes with the aim of ensuring their safety, names, places, and situations have been “interchanged,” hence the fluid structure in its writing. “Names mean nothing, when we are one and the same,” she writes, emphasizing women have been constantly threatened by “scandal.” The second part is allocated to various pastry and baking recipes each written and organized in correspondence with one of the political prisoner women. She dedicates these recipes to the women who “have always lived under the shadow of scandal” and continues with mentioning a number of such women, Makiyyeh Neisy, an Arab political prisoner woman who lost her life the year before at Sheyban Prison, in Ahwaz, one of the women whose agonies have been addressed by the author in various parts of the book.
She has also made a documentary, called “Pang,” at the end-part of which, she dedicates her work to all the prisoners of the Central Prison of Boushehr. The statement portrayed before the documentary starts reads: “to all your cameras, which are disgusting; the narrators of untruth and embodiment of bane. Yet, the truth will out, and truth will ooze out through the sack of lies and furrows of your towering walls, digesting the camera, cameraman and dishonest narrator in itself.” In this documentary, Gholian herself is present and performing. Her own account of this work, published on Akhbar-eh Rooz website is as follows: “Is you pang slaughtered? The camera was one recording and spreading lies! Life in inferno and resistance at the heart of barbarity. This is Sepidar Prison, Boushehr Central Prison, Gharchak-eh Varamin Prison, this is the Islamic Republic prison. Here we are, with harassment, camera, forced confession, deceit, and a lie acted out, an organized lie thrown into our faces, us, the people, hundreds of times. “I’m a woman, prisoner, confectioner, Kurd, Arab, Lur, Gilak, I am invisible!” forlornly away from home. Come to “Pang” confectionary workshop. Leave all the plight and war behind, and taste some sweet with us, the forgotten. In Boushehri dialect, “pang” means a date cluster, and people of the south have always signed their agonies off to “date clusters” throughout their history!”
Her first arrest happened at night in Feb. 24, 2017 in her father’s house, when she was a veterinary student, after which she was transferred to an unknown location. The reason for her first arrest was reported by sources close to her family to be her “activities on the Instagram” and “civil activism.” For the second time, in Nov. 18, 2018, she got arrested for participating in Haft-Tappeh workers’ demonstrations along with a number of protesting workers. She was first transferred to a detention house in Shoosh City, the city in which workers’ demonstrations had taken place, along with the labor representative of the factory, and then she was sent to Sepidar Prison, in Ahwaz, by the security forces; some close sources informed about the battery and assault which was exerted against her upon arrest and in the course of persecutions. In Dec. 18, 2018, her release was reported in the news, after a month of detention, and on a certain sum of bail.
After release, she tweeted about the tortures she had to go through while imprisoned in Jan. 9, 2019. She revealed that both she and Ismail Bakhshi, a labor activist at the same factory, were severely tortured while under arrest. She stated her will to give a testimony of the torture exerted against herself and Ismail Bakhshi. She also tweeted saying the security forces of the Ministry of Intelligence would only release her on condition of attesting to certain “sexual charges.” She posted a thread on Tweeter revealing that these agents had exerted physical torture on her by cable strikes and mental torture by importing sexual charges. She also wrote that in the course of torture, the interrogators had forced Ismail Bakhshi to curse himself. Ismail Bakhshi, too, described the tortures he and Sepideh Ghlian had to go through in detention, and demanded a public response by the minister of intelligence of the Islamic Republic. He challenged Mahmud Alavi to a televised debate in this regard. He declared that while in detention, the security agents of the Ministry of Intelligence would “batter” them and use “all sorts of sexually obscene insults” against them. He also revealed his family contacts being “wired.” According to him, these tortures were carried out with such a degree of severity that he would still suffer from panic attacks days after his release.
In Jan. 14, 2019, Assal Muhammadi, too, a member of the editorial board of “Gam” journal, who was arrested for a number of days following her support for workers’ protests in Khuzestan the same year and then got released, declared that she had witnessed firsthand the tortures exerted on these two labor activists and was willing to give a testimony at court in support of their claims. She also stated that she had witnessed “long hours of interrogation” Sepideh Gholian had to go through; interrogations that, according to her, would begin at 10 in the morning and continue till midnight on an almost daily basis. “I could heart her interrogator shutting and insulting from the neighboring room. I had to witness a day when they put her under such an immense pressure to make a false confession, that she was just scratching her darling face, wishing for death.”
In Jan. 19, the same year, the national television of Islamic Republic broadcast a report called “A Plan Compromised” from its “8:30” propaganda news show in which it published the interrogation documents of a number of the arrested labor activist in Khuzestan along with their “confessions” against themselves. In this report, security charges were made against these activists such as attributing them to communist and subversive groups trying to form independent laborer organizations. Many of these prisoners emphasized having been tortured by the security forces in order to record such confessions before the camera.
A while before this report being published, Sepideh Gholian announced on her Tweeter that “on the last day, the interrogator was saying that if I opened my mouth after release, these very claims and forced confessions against you and Ismail Bkhashti will be broadcast in 8:30 news show and they would turn us into ashes.” “Say nothing of me and Ismail Bakhshi,” she wrote in a separate tweet after that report being broadcast, “even if you seat five thousand workers of Haft-Tappeh in front of the camera, and elicit forced confessions from them by the help of cable and baton strikes, all this still will not wash the fact off that you are oppressive and corrupt.”
The broadcast of these forced confessions stirred many reactions on social networks, and in Jan. 22, 2019, a number of civil and cultural retirees of Iran started a demonstration in front of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs’ complex and in it, while protesting against their livelihood conditions, also shouted slogans against the so-called documentary of “A Plan Compromised.” The slogan saying “neither torture nor documentary would do anymore” and “neither bullet nor confession would do anymore” were two main slogans shouted by these protestors against the denial of the tortures exerted against Ismail Bakhshi and Sepideh Gholian and its following broadcast of forced confessions by Islamic Republic’s national television.
Later, the International Transport Workers’ Federation made official protest against the same confession documentary and demanded the complete and immediate release of both Ismail Bakhshi and Sepideh Gholian. This labor organization published an open letter to Hassan Rowhani, then Iran’s president, and deemed this documentary report to be a “confession taken by torture” and expressed its profound concern with the conditions of the workers of Iran, asking Iranian authorities to put an end to “torture.” The letter in question states the following about this documentary: “It is proved by valid information that these confessions were elicited through threats, battery, and torture. Such cases of the violation of the most basic human rights needs to be put to halt immediately.” Stephen Cotton, the general secretary of ITF Global. In addition, her name was also mentioned in the report of the secretary-general of the United Nations at the time regarding human rights conditions in Iran.
Sepideh Gholian herself published a note on her personal accounts on social networks where she stated that she has field an official complaint against Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, one of the anchors of 8:30 news show [commonly referred to as interrogator-journalist in Iran by the dissidents], about which she wrote: “In every stage of the production of “A Plan Compromised,” Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour was present in the interrogation room so that after many hours of physical and mental torture, she would hand a text over to us to be recited verbatim in front of the camera.”
However, she was arrested along with her brother, Mehdi Gholian, in Jan. 20, 2019, only one day after the broadcast of her forced confession on the national television. The security forces had raided her father’s house to arrest her where they were faced with her brother’s resistance. “The security forces made assault and battery against Mehdi Gholian and his sister and arrested and transferred them to an unknown location without presenting any warrant,” as reported by Persian BBC. After that, Sepideh Gholian’s father gave an interview in which he stated: “It was 7 in the morning, 12 male and 2 female security agents raided our house violently, broke my son’s teeth, assaulted me and my wife, and threatened to kill my daughter. I beg you not let them fulfill their threat.” In Jan. 23, the same year, Persian BBC also reported her family being “under pressure and threatened” by the security organizations for the interviews they had given over the status of their children. In addition, on Jan. 21, a group of lawyers and legalists issued an open letter to Javid Rahman, the third Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in which they condemned the arrest of Ismail Bakhshi and Sepideh Gholian. These Iranian lawyers expressed their concern over the conditions of these two prisoners and deemed their arrest conduct in contradiction to the code of criminal procedure. As reported by Radio Zamaneh website, in Jan. 26, 2019, over 800 signatories published a jointly signed statement in which they expressed solidarity with Ismail Bakhshi and Sepideh Gholian and Haft-Tappeh factory workers’ protests, and demanded the immediate release of these two political prisoners. That aside, in Jan. 23, 2019, a group of leftist political activists published another jointly signed statement and demanded their immediate release.
Amnesty International published a statement in Jan. 29, 2019 and warned against what it called “the explicit danger of the continuation” of torture against Ismail Bakhshi and Sepideh Gholian. It, too, requested the Iranian officials to immediately release these two political prisoners and address their torture-related charges and legally persecute the tentative torturers. It also demanded protection for Ismail Bakhshi and Sepideh Gholian against torture and pledged everyone to write petition letters to the regime officials in demand for their release.
In total, Sepideh Gholian was sentenced to 19 years and 6 months of imprisonment. Regarding the charge of collusion and conspiracy against national security, she was sentenced to seven years, and for the charge of “membership in Gam [journal] group,” to seven years of imprisonment, and for the charge of “propaganda against the regime,” to one year and six months of imprisonment, for the charge of the “distribution of fake news” to two years and six months of imprisonment, and, finally, for the charge of “disruption of the public order” to one year and six months of imprisonment. She was eventually released on an extremely heavy bail in Oct. 26, 2019 and at the Court of Appeals, her sentence was reduced to five years of discretionary custodial imprisonment. In June 16, 2020, she released a video on her Tweeter account and revealed that she will be transferred to Gharchak-Eh Varamin Prison since she had not consented to writing a pardon-seeking letter to the supreme leader.
Sepideh Gholian was arrested in June 21, 2020 and transferred to Evin Prison to serve her sentence over participation in the 2018 Haft-Tappeh workers’ protests. In Mar. 11, 2021, she was relocated to Bushehr Prison as prison in exile. Her relocation from Evin Prison, women’s ward, took place in fetters and handcuff, 11 at night. However, in Oct. 11, 2021 and while in prison break, she was arrested when 30 security forces raided her sister’s house and got transferred to an unknown location. Later, in Oct. 14, the same year, she was transferred from Ahwaz to Bushehr and then retransferred to Evin Prison, Ward 209.
Through the years of her imprisonment, she went on hunger strikes multiple times, the latest of which was Sept. 2022, and in protest against the lack of proceedings of her request to be transferred to a prison located in her parents’ city. This strike caused “intestinal bleeding.” This year, while serving the fourth year of her sentence, she wrote a letter from Evin Prison in which she wrote she could hear the footsteps of liberation and freedom from all over the country and that prison walls would not be able to fend off the dawn of “Woman, Life, Freedom” in every corner of Iran. There, she mentions her own observation of a prisoner being interrogated at Evin’s “cultural” section who was kept in extremely cold weather and interrogated while only having a thin shirt. She then continues by saying “it is not hard to guess that during this time, the majority of prison sentences and executions have been extracted out of such interrogations. From such torture-chambers…” In this letter, Sepideh Gholian discussed her own experience of forced confession in Dec. 2018 and writes about the interrogators’ humiliation and insults and being body-searched by mean and the constant fear of harassment and torture. She reveals that Islamic Republic national TV journalist, Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, nicknamed as Ms. “Asgari,” has played a key role in the forced confession elicited from her in the detention house.
As reported by HRA, the Iranian human rights news agency, Mehdi Gholian, Sepideh’s brother, announced in mid-Nov 2022 that her sister has been denied contacts since Nov. 19 and had made absolutely no contact with family. Her parents’ follow-up’s, carried out despite long distance between Tehran and their residential area, did not come to any resolution. Publishing a number of images of court’s official order, he announced the implementation of a new case against his sister with such charges as the “distribution of fake news” and “insult against authorities and agents” and “distribution of accusations and aspersions.”
In the last year, there were reports claiming that she had contracted coronavirus and her health condition turning critical. In these reports, it was stated that in a complete harmony of the judiciary and security organizations, not only did not the prison authorities denied any medical care for her, but also prevented her emergency sick leave by employing whatever means. Sepideh Gholian was born in Sept. 23, 1994, and was introduced as one of the hundred inspiring and effective women of the year 2022 by BBC.
