From Writing Slogans on Dorm Walls to a Prison Cell
by Milad Pourisa — 15December2023
Faezeh, a student who was arrested during the women’s protests for wall writing advocating for life and freedom, is still grappling with the psychological difficulties resulting from the interrogations, verbal sexual harassment, and the consequences of exile to another university, one year later.
Faizeh, a student who was arrested for writing slogans on walls during the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests, is still grappling, after a year, with the psychological unpleasantness stemming from the period of interrogation, sexual verbal abuse, and the consequences of being exiled to another university.
“During the first interrogation, the sexual threats from the interrogator began. He came towards me, pressed himself against me, and said, ‘We know you come from a religious family, we can strip you naked right here.’ I had a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe, and my body started shaking violently.”
Writing slogans on the dormitory walls of Allameh Tabataba’i University, being summoned to the disciplinary committee a week later with the same accusation, being arrested another week later, and then being exiled from Allameh Tabataba’i University in Tehran to Shiraz University by direct order of the Ministry of Intelligence. These events, which all occurred within approximately a month, have shaken the life of a former student of Allameh Tabataba’i University in Tehran so profoundly that recounting them is still difficult for her.
Zamaneh has spoken to this student about the suffering during her arrest and exile. For security reasons, we will refer to this student by the pseudonym “Faizeh” in this report.
Faizeh is one of the many students who spent nearly half of her undergraduate studies during the COVID-19 university closures, attending classes virtually. Three days after the announcement of Mahsa (Jina) Amini’s death and a few days after returning to university after two years of virtual study, she and her friends wrote slogans on the dormitory walls of Allameh University:
“All these events, from entering the university to writing slogans in the dormitory, then the disciplinary committee and arrest, all happened within two weeks. I was admitted in 2020 and spent two years studying online. I had just come from my hometown to Tehran and settled in the Allameh dormitory when Mahsa’s death was announced. On September 16, we wrote slogans on the dormitory wall. We hadn’t realized that the dormitory officials were monitoring us and reporting to the university. A week later, we were summoned to the disciplinary committee, and a week after that, right in front of the dormitory, a car pulled up and took me and several of my friends. Blindfolded, we were on the road for about twenty minutes before being transferred to a detention center.”
Faizeh explains that she has been suffering from depression for many years, for which she has been taking medication. She started experiencing “panic attacks” two years before her arrest, severely worsening her condition during detention.
Interrogation with Sexual Threats and Panic Attacks
Describing her condition in the detention center, Faizeh shares:
“The arrest was shocking for me. I was immediately overwhelmed with severe anxiety. There were many detained students in that detention center. Some were interrogated about tweets, others about university gatherings. I was mostly interrogated about writing slogans in the dormitory. The interrogator insisted that they knew everything about me in the university and dormitory. I have been suffering from depression for years, and the psychological pressure of this environment was immense. I became isolated and didn’t talk to anyone.”
But what has truly caused severe psychological damage to Faizeh, even after more than a year, is not this. She recounts that after four days in this detention center, she was transferred to Kachui Prison. Her tone, starting from the moment she begins to recount her transfer to this prison, becomes choked, her sentences incomplete. The detention, accompanied by sexual harassment, has left psychological scars, such as severe distrust of men, which persist to this day:
“My friends from Allameh and I were in Kachui Prison for almost two weeks. From the very first moment, we were separated from each other. The interrogations in Kachui constantly worsened my condition. I became increasingly isolated and distrustful of others.”
Faizeh continues, citing several examples of threats she faced in the interrogation room, saying that the sexual threats from the interrogators began in the very first interrogation:
“A few minutes into the interrogation, the interrogator came towards me and pressed his body against mine. My eyes were closed, and this made the situation more terrifying for me. In a filthy tone, he said, ‘Look! We know you come from a religious family. I can strip you naked right here and do such and such to you…’ A panic attack started. I have been suffering from depression for years, and I had started experiencing panic attacks the year before this arrest.”
Her father, from the very first days of her arrest, brought her medication to the officials of Kachui Prison, medication that never reached Faizeh.
Despite the psychological pressure from her depression and panic attacks, the physical and sexual threats continued in subsequent interrogations:
“On the second day of detention, I was still feeling so bad that I couldn’t go for interrogation. On the third day, my poor condition continued. Again, immediately upon entering the interrogation room, the threats from the interrogator began. It was a different interrogator. First, he threatened me with death. He said, ‘We destroy some students in small towns, and no one ever finds out. We will do the same to you.’ Then he gradually started his irrelevant talk. In an ugly tone, he said, ‘Do you want us to ask you about this?’ He had seen how much the sexual harassment on the first day had upset me. In the middle of the interrogation, he suddenly told me to stand up from the chair. With my eyes closed, I stood up, and he came so close that I could hear his breathing. I struggled to stand on my feet to not show weakness.”
Faizeh continued with short and sometimes incomplete sentences, showing how bad she felt recalling this memory after a year:
“He started talking irrelevantly again. He said, ‘I really like the city where you were born. I have a daughter your age. If you do what we say, you will be released, and I will come to your city…’ As he continued his irrelevant talk, I had another panic attack. I was petrified, and a strange trembling started in my body. I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t speak. They took me back to the cell again.”
For a week, these interrogative harassments continued, and every day a different interrogator tried to break the resistance of this young student with verbal abuse and death threats:
“The feeling of insecurity was such that every day after returning to the cell, I couldn’t even trust my own cellmates. I became more withdrawn each day and completely lost the ability to speak. My cellmates were also in very bad shape. Some said they had been assaulted too. I had been taking medication for depression for several years, but even though my father had brought the medication, they didn’t give it to me and left me in that state. My condition worsened every day. In the last interrogation, the interrogator again said that I could return to university and study. But I had to do what they said. What he meant was that I should spy for them.”
The Agony of Exile for a Student Traumatized by Torture
A week of interrogation accompanied by verbal abuse and panic attacks, followed by another week of being abandoned in a cell without the right to contact family and access to medication, was not the end of the torture and punishment saga for Faizeh, a former student of Allameh Tabataba’i University in Tehran.
When Faizeh was released on bail after a total of three weeks of detention, she realized that Allameh University, under direct orders from the Ministry of Intelligence and without any written decree, had exiled her to Shiraz University.
The exile of a student to a university in another city is itself accompanied by great anxiety. The treatment of the authorities and even the university professors towards such students is usually marked by discrimination and increased pressure.
Faizeh speaks about the psychological effects left from the torture of detention in the following months:
“The feeling of distrust towards others has remained with me for months after entering Shiraz University and even to this day. I am very close to my father, but the sense of insecurity was so high that for a long time, even approaching him had become difficult for me. My mental state in Shiraz was so bad that my parents would tell me to quit my studies and come back.”
With this mental state, the harassment by the university staff began:
“Allameh University had told my father that I would be transferred to Shiraz University for one term. When I did not return to Allameh University after one term, I protested several times to the officials of Shiraz University. The head of the education department at this university constantly humiliated me. He would say, ‘You’ll go back to where you were.’ Or even threatened me in terms of security, saying, ‘We’ll arrest you right here.”
Mockery in the Dormitory for Talking in Sleep
When Faizeh finally got a dormitory room at the university after two months, without the choice of selecting roommates, harassment from her roommates and dormitory officials began:
“I usually talk in my sleep and have a lot of nightmares. In the first few days in the dormitory, when I had nightmares and talked to myself at night, the girls in the room would mockingly say in the morning, ‘You say such things in your sleep.’ The fact that they even understood the content of my dreams increased my anxiety. This pattern started in the Allameh University dormitory, and now I hate dormitories.”
Faizeh’s humiliation even continued in her specialized classes:
“The humiliation continued in some of my specialized classes. In the class of one or two professors, I didn’t wear a headscarf. Of course, one or two other students also didn’t observe the hijab. The professor, without addressing them, would tell me, ‘Who are you to come to class like this? Are you sitting by the beach?’ He continued and reached the point of questioning my beliefs. In class, he would ask me, ‘Do you believe in God?’ Or some other professors would pretend to be critics of the current situation and still directly tell me because of my hijab, ‘We too are against the current situation, but protesting is not about causing unrest in the university.”
Non-Issuance of Student ID and Ban from Entering the University
More than a year has passed since Faizeh’s arrest with torture and then her exile to Shiraz University, yet she still hasn’t been issued a student ID at Shiraz University, which has given security an excuse to occasionally harass her:
“After a year, for various reasons, they didn’t issue me a student ID. Security constantly harasses me for this reason. Here, it is mandatory for female students to wear a headscarf. I enter the university with a headscarf. Security has harassed me several times because of my clothing style and even recently banned me from the university for a while because of my hijab.”
Despite all of this, Faizeh’s mental state has improved after a year, and she insists that if she could go back to last September, she would still protest against the Islamic Republic. An answer many other tortured protesting students from the Woman, Life, Freedom movement have given to this same exact question.
