A/HRC/25/61
Today, economic problems in Iran have destroyed the social fabric. Drug use by women is
common, whereas this was not the case in the past. There are husbands who push their
wives into prostitution. When she was in prison, she was with a 21-year-old woman who
told her that her husband was bringing other men to the house in order to force her into
prostitution, and that she became pregnant by another man, at which point the husband
accused her of adultery. When she was in Iran, she recalls a place called Bahar where the
Government would bring street children. It was supposed to be an educational center for
them, but there was very little supervision, and the children often fled. She claims that some
of the girls taken to prostitution or e even sold by Government officials or their own fathers
to Gulf Arab men.
Mahin Shokrullah-Pour
Former political prisoner / husband killed
Both she and her husband have been active for Kurdish parties and in prison. Her husband
was in prison for 3.5 years. Due to having been in prison, they were cut off from social
opportunities in Iran, and her husband had to work as a freelancer.
Both of them were put in prison in 1365 (1986). Her husband, Mr. Farahman Sadegh
Vaziri, who was detained at the Sanandaj Intelligence Detention Center, had been released
after the executions of 1988. He had actually been sentenced to death, but at the time, there
was the possibility of buying a commutation to a life-sentence.
They both thought that life would get better after release, but even after he was released, he
had to report to authorities once per week. Moreover, they had children, and those children
were subject to pressure. For example, at school, if her son was at the top of the class, he
would never be officially at the top of the class, as he would be excluded from the list. The
same happened to her daughter.
In 2003, they decided to leave the country due to this pressure. They made it to Oroumiyeh,
but there they were arrested by authorities. They were taken away in a two-car convoy.
There was a Revolutionary Guard in the front of the car, and she was trying to explain that
they had just come for a summer picnic. He replied: “If it were up to me I would just let
you go right now, but the guys in the front car are in charge.”
They were taken to the Sarmaz Intelligence police center. Her son was 16 and her daughter
was eight-years-old at the time. Officials told them not to worry; that there was a simple
“price” for “what they wanted to do across the border”: 30 million tumans. Then they took
her husband away, and left her and her son handcuffed to chairs (her daughter was able to
walk around).
However, the next morning, when her husband was brought out and she tried to approach
him, the guards restrained her. She could tell that something was wrong. All of a sudden,
the bribe offer was off of the table, and they were taken to court and then to the public
prison at Sarmaz (for common criminals). She was worried about her son since this
province was known for heroin; she assumed that there would also be drugs in the prison.
Everyone was being interrogated every day. What she “didn’t know was that [her]”
husband had been subjected to harsh torture and was being brought back in front of her son
every day.
When she saw her husband for days later, he was unrecognizable and did not respond to her
calls in the courtyard. He was being dragged along and his shoulders and arms were
slumped. She began to scream and asked the guards what they had done to her; they denied
having anything to do with it and said that that’s “how he is.”
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