by Marina Nemat
My Canadian
Passport
Andre, Michael, and I took our Canadian citizenship oath and received our citizenship certificates on May 29, 1995. We didn’t have a ceremony with other new Canadians because we had decided we could not wait until July 1—Canada Day. We wanted to vote in the upcoming general election in Ontario in June, so we contacted the authorities and they gave us a private appointment before the public ceremony. For the first time in his life, Michael wore a suit and a tie, and Andre and I dressed in our best outfits. We had passed the citizenship test, which deals with Canadian history and geography. Andre applied for his Canadian passport as soon as we became citizens because he needed to travel for work, but I had no travel plans and didn’t get mine until Prisoner of Tehran came out in 2007. After leaving Iran, Andre and I never renewed our Iranian passports.
Once I began to travel abroad, I always looked at the passports of other travellers as I lined up in strange airports to have my passport stamped, trying to discover where the travellers were from. After September 11, 2001, individuals from the Middle East could be harassed at security checks, especially in the United States, but in Canada and Europe as well. I always presented my Canadian passport with pride and a smile. Whenever I went to the United States, the American customs officer would ask me when I had last been to Iran. I would reply that I hadn’t returned since leaving in 1990. Once Iran is free from dictatorship and tyranny, I will apply for an Iranian passport, but I will never forget that Canada gave us a home when we were in desperate need.
Establishing ourselves in Canada took us years, and only after Prisoner of Tehran appeared did I truly feel at home here. Canada has made it possible for me to recover my voice and become an advocate for those who cannot speak out. This does not mean that I believe Canada is perfect; it is not. However, in Canada we have the opportunity to speak and be heard.
When I received an email from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police inviting me to address a seminar on torture in September 2007, I was pleasantly surprised. The email explained that the seminar aimed to inform RCMP members about the illegality and odiousness of torture. It noted that victims were the most important persons in a criminal investigation, but their voices were usually not heard. The RCMP wanted a survivor to talk about her experience to reveal torture’s inhumanity.
That a Canadian institution was inviting me to address such a crucial issue meant a great deal to me. If someone had told me when I was in Evin that I would one day speak at a conference on torture, I would not have believed it. Back then, the world had forgotten about my friends and me. So many years later, the situation in Iran had not improved much, but at last, I had the opportunity to talk to the world about it. I accepted the RCMP invitation. I believe that many organizations like the RCMP that sometimes do wrong are composed of good men and women. I have faith that they can learn from their mistakes and make sure that things change for the better. They were willing to give me a chance to bear witness, so I had to take it. My testimony could potentially help many. Having been a victim of torture has affected and defined me. Head held high, I have to use all I have learned and try to stop torture in any shape or form.
As a child, I never imagined that I would one day put “victim of torture” on my résumé. I had wanted to become a medical doctor, and I was hard-working enough to do it, but after prison I abhorred the thought of going back to school in the Islamic Republic. I knew authorities would watch my every move and continue their relentless efforts to brainwash me and turn me into an obedient citizen.
RCMP headquarters sat on the outskirts of Ottawa in a large and impressive modern building that belonged to one of the hightech giants of the dot-com bubble. Before the seminar began, I met the other speakers: assistant Crown attorney Don Macdougall; Department of Justice lawyer John McManus; Concordia history professor, author, and director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies Dr. Frank Chalk; and former CIA agent, author, and subject of the movie Syriana Robert Baer. They were to speak about state torture and its history; I was the victim who would help the audience understand how it felt to be tortured. I was to put a human face on the faceless victim, who is usually only a number, a vague and insignificant entity.
The seminar took place in a state-of-the art auditorium. Approximately two hundred members of the RCMP attended. Don Macdougall began his talk by explaining what torture is under the law. I had never thought much about how the law describes it—I had always assumed that the nature of torture was obvious. But apparently, the need for a legal description existed. Mr. Macdougall said that torture was pain or suffering inflicted on a person. The pain needs to be severe and there needs to be a purpose for it: to obtain information, a statement, or for any reason based on discrimination.
Severe pain? Did they have a pain meter? I wondered, a machine that measured suffering? Where was the line between “severe” and “not severe?” Maybe anything 10 and over was severe and your pain was the result of torture, but at 9.5 your pain wasn’t severe and not the result of torture. Many victims of torture have visible injuries. If people had looked at my feet the first few days after I was lashed, they would have been horrified, but I gradually healed, and before long, no one could see the marks unless he or she knew what to look for. Still, if someone carefully touches the soles of my feet, especially my left foot, even now he or she will feel little bumps of scar tissue. But some methods of torture don’t leave visible scars: sleep deprivation, hot and cold shocks, water boarding, psychological intimidation, rape, long periods of solitary confinement, mock executions, to name a few. What about the victims of those horrible acts?
“Torture always has to have been inflicted by an official or officer,” Mr. Macdougall said. “And an official or officer can be liable for torture as a party even when he or she has not directly taken part in it. According to Canadian law, if an official has a real suspicion that torture is taking place and ignores it, he or she can be as guilty as the perpetrator. Canadian soldiers were accused of torture in Somalia in 1993 and were court-martialled. One of them was charged with murder and three others with torture. According to Canadian law, a Canadian can be charged for torture even if the crime is committed outside Canada.”
My mind drifted back to Evin and my visits to the Hosseinieh, a gym-size room on the prison grounds where hundreds could gather. The guards took us there to listen to propaganda speeches, attend group prayers, and hear the “confessions” of other prisoners. One day, prison authorities recited a list of recent executions. I knew a few of the girls whose names were on the list, but none was a close friend of mine. Prison authorities had never announced names in this manner, and no one knew why they were doing it this time. The names I recognized belonged to prisoners who had cooperated with authorities and “repented” of their anti-revolutionary actions. Was this the authorities’ way of showing us that even those who had “repented” were not immune from capital punishment? A sense of shock filled the Hosseinieh as the names were read. It was as if no one was breathing. Silence was an ocean that had drowned us all.
During another of our visits to the Hosseinieh, the guards told us that a few members of a human-rights organization (perhaps the Red Cross) had come to talk to us and see with their own eyes that we were all fine and thriving in Evin! One of the visitors, a middle-aged woman who wore a head scarf, not a chador, sat next to me. In English, she asked me how the girls in the prison were doing, and I silently looked at her. She repeated her question, and I said, “Fine.” A part of me wanted to scream, How do you think we’re doing? They’re torturing us, raping us, and killing us, and you sit there smiling and ask how we’re doing? You’ll go back to your nice life, and we’ll stay here. What do you honestly expect us to tell you? Do you really think we can tell you the truth? They will shoot us right behind those doors if we say a word about what really happens here.
Back then, the thought of going to conferences and talking about torture and what could be done about i
t would have frustrated me. I wanted out of Evin immediately, and I wanted torture and executions to stop at once. I wanted the people of Iran to march into the prison and free us before another innocent life was lost. But this didn’t happen. I did not understand what use it was for people to talk about torture while we suffered. Twenty-five years later, I came to see that my only way to fight the terrible things that had happened—and were still happening in Iran and in other countries around the world—was to attend conferences, write books and articles, and speak at events.
John McManus, another speaker at the RCMP seminar, recounted his experience as a clerk at the Federal Court of Canada when he first became a lawyer. He had worked for Justice William McKeown, and they had done many judicial reviews of the applications of refugee claimants. When Justice McKeown, who was unfailingly thorough, found a legal problem in a case, he would send the case back to the review board for reconsideration. Mr. McManus remembered one case in particular. A woman from Chile had been a political prisoner during the reign of General Augusto Pinochet and had been tortured. After her ordeal, she slowly tried to reintegrate herself into society. In the beginning, she was afraid to even step out of her house. Then she began going out with friends and was making progress. One day at the market, she saw one of her torturers. He came up to her and said that just because General Pinochet was no longer president, it didn’t mean that she was safe. His supporters knew exactly where she lived, and they could find her easily. She fled the country the next day and claimed refugee status in Canada, but she was denied. Canadian authorities said that since Pinochet was no longer president, she would not be in danger if she returned to Chile. However, Justice McKeown decided that she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which was the result of the torture she had endured. The incident at the market had brought her extreme fear to the surface once more. As far as Mr. McManus could remember, this was probably the only time Justice McKeown sent back a file to the review board not for reconsideration but to order refugee status for the claimant.
I was impressed with Justice McKeown’s decision.
In the summer of 2009, a friend of mine—also an ex–political prisoner from Iran—told me that in 2001 or 2002, at a protest rally against the Iranian regime taking place in front of a federal building in Los Angeles, California, she saw her interrogator. She couldn’t believe her eyes and felt paralyzed. I asked her if she went to the authorities, did anything to expose him. She said she did not. She couldn’t move and had to look away. When she finally looked back, the man was walking off. He disappeared into the crowd. My friend had already been in the United States for a few years and had had plans to visit her family in Iran. She cancelled her ticket and has never been back.
What would I do if I were to run into one of my interrogators? Ali is dead, but what about Hamehd? I have heard that he was killed, but I am not sure how reliable that information is. If he were alive, would I even recognize him after all these years? If I did spot him in a crowd, what would I do? I don’t know. There is a good possibility that—just like my friend—I, too, would be paralyzed.
During one of my talks in Toronto, I made it clear that I was against torture in any shape or form, and for any reason, and a man in the audience said that in order for us Westerners to save our way of life from Islamism and terrorists, we had to do whatever it took. I asked him how far he was willing to go to save his way of life.
“As far as it takes,” he said.
“That is what Hitler said,” I responded. “You can get so consumed with saving your way of life that in the process, as you get really busy torturing people, you forget what your way of life was in the first place. When we talk about our way of life, don’t we mean the way of a society that is not only democratic but also shows unconditional respect for the rights of all human beings? Don’t we mean a society that has a clear understanding of right and wrong and knows that wrong can never lead to right? All horrors in history have happened when we have begun justifying things.”
In Evin, they believed I knew the whereabouts of a girl named Shahrzad, and they kept on asking me about her. She was a member of a Marxist group and was a friend of a friend of mine. We met after school one day, and she walked home with me. She invited me to join her group, but I refused. I explained to her that I respected her beliefs, but I was a devout Catholic and could never get along with Marxists. She went her way, and I never saw her again. Apparently, she was being watched at the time, and this was how my interrogators had discovered that I had met with her. She went into hiding, but I was arrested. However, I wasn’t arrested only because of her. My high-school principal, who was a member of the Revolutionary Guard, had given my name, along with the names of many students from my school, to the Courts of Islamic Justice.
Under torture, I told my interrogators the truth, but they didn’t believe me. I was a naïve girl who thought that if she told the truth, she would be saved. What I failed to see was that my interrogators’ main purpose in torturing me was not to find Shahrzad but to destroy me. Of course, it would have been a bonus had I told them where she was.
After Prisoner of Tehran appeared in print, I met some ex–political prisoners from different countries of South America who had been active members of various political groups. They had been trained to withhold information and tell lies for the first twenty-four hours of their interrogation. After twenty-four hours, they were allowed to share some of what they knew with the authorities. This gave their comrades some time to escape. I was sixteen when arrested, I was not a member of any political group, and I had never been taught what to do under torture.
At the RCMP seminar, Dr. Frank Chalk talked at length about the history of torture and said that in medieval times strict rules governed the torture chamber. The instruments of torture were shown to the potential victim. That often did the trick and the accused would recant—the prospect of having parts of one’s flesh torn from one’s body was, to say the least, intimidating. The judge accompanied the accused into the torture chamber, and notaries documented the proceedings. A doctor’s presence was usually required, even though the job of the doctor was only to throw a bucket of water on the accused. And no defence lawyer was present in the chamber.
I was amazed at how procedures in the prisons of the Islamic Republic of Iran were similar to those of the prisons in medieval Europe. In Evin before they took me into the torture room, my interrogators first made me sit in the hallway and listen to a victim undergoing torture. It was a man, and he was being lashed. I heard the sound of the lash cutting the air. Then the man screamed. It went on and on. Never-ending agony. They finally took me into the same room and tied me up. Not only were there no defence lawyers present, but there were also no notaries or doctors.
I would have told them where Shahrzad was had I known. But I didn’t, and I thanked God for it. The interrogators gave me papers to sign, and I signed them all without reading a word.
In early summer 2009, a friend sent me a very short—less than two minutes—video clip. Where it was filmed is not clear, but it seems to have been a European city. A group of Iranian protesters have gathered in front of an Iranian Embassy and are yelling slogans against the Islamic regime. Embassy staff are watching the crowd. A female protester’s voice rises above everyone else’s: “We’ll kill you all! We’ll execute you all! We’ll make you suffer!”
I can understand her anger, but don’t we protest against the Iranian regime because it kills, executes, and tortures? When the regime finally collapses and power changes hands, if the new authorities behave the same way as the ones who came before them, we will not be much better off than we are today. Is this the kind of justice we seek? Iran will not become a better place until we accept that killing and torture are wrong under any circumstances.
I witnessed how the Revolutionary Guard and the Courts of Islamic Justice took over the work of SAVAK, the shah’s secret police, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. In the name of protecting t
he revolution and national security, they committed countless atrocities. During the time of the shah, Evin perhaps held a few hundred prisoners, but in the eighties, there were thousands, the vast majority of whom were teenagers. After the lashings and beatings, prisoners were sent to different cells, many of which were solitary. Solitary confinement is a form of torture designed to break the human spirit. The loneliness and the lack of communication with others can make one mad.
When I was in solitary confinement in the 209 section of Evin prison, prisoners could shower once a week. In the beginning, a female guard who was probably in her late fifties would escort me to the shower stalls. She never said much and was not mean. She never rushed me or called me names. After a while, a young woman took her place. The first time she came to walk me to the showers, she flung open the door of my cell without any warning, so I didn’t have a chance to put on my chador and blindfold. She screamed at me for not having them on. When I protested, she said that I was a dirty Christian, an unclean infidel, and I didn’t deserve to be treated like a human being.
“I’ve heard all about you,” she said. “They say you’ve converted to Islam. Yeah, right! You might have fooled some people. Not me. I know what you’re made of. You’re a dirty whore! Married your interrogator. Whatever. He’ll get tired of you, you know. Then you’ll get what you deserve.”
I didn’t say a word and ignored her.
On our way to the showers, she stopped at the cell next to mine and kicked the door open. A woman screamed.
“Get up, you dirty infidel!” the guard yelled. “Just like the Christian, you have no shame! Where’s your chador? Put it on! Baha’i, Christian—what’s the difference? The two of you can shower together. They must shoot you both. I don’t even know why I have to take you to wash up. No amount of washing will make you clean.”