The Mullahs' Killing Fields
By Donna M. Hughes
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 14, 2004

A former political prisoner and the daughter of two slain parents vowed to make sure the voices of Iranians who have suffered under the Islamic fundamentalist regime heard. The two women said they stand by other activists who continue to be arrested, tortured, and executed in Iran for supporting freedom and democracy.

On the occasion of International Human Rights Day (Friday, December 10), the torture and execution of political prisoners in Iran was the focus of a briefing in New York hosted by the non-governmental organization Women's Freedom Forum. The treatment of women, especially women political activists, was featured.

The walls of the room were lined with documentary posters with names and photographs of men, women, and children who had been killed by the mullahs in Iran . A number of the photographs were family groups – mother, father, and two, three, four, five, even six children - that had been killed by the Iranian regime for their political activism.

The program included videos and photographs of trials, lashings and executions over the past 25 years. Some images were from the early days of the revolution, some from the late 1980s, and one photograph showing the hanging of a group of seven men in Zahedan just three days before the event on December 7, 2004 .

The victims are hoisted into the air by a crane in a public place in order to terrorize the population and suppress further resistance to the regime. Another Iranian-American pro-democracy non-governmental organization -The Committee in Support of Referendum in Iran-sends out news clippings on a regular basis that document the executions of men, women, and sometimes children, as the Iranian regime executes minors. There are often two or three pages of listings of sentences and executions. Their most recent report for November 2004 listed 15 executions or sentences for execution. A number of them are punishment for political activity against the regime inside and outside Iran .

On November 10 a man in Tehran was sentenced to death for allegedly killing a Tehran district mayor.

On November 21 a political prisoner was sentenced to death for allegedly bombing a government building in 1998. He is the brother of man known to belong to an opposition group who was killed earlier. The report speculated that issuing a death sentence six and a half years after an alleged crime was retaliation against the opposition group for revealing information on the regime's clandestine atomic sites.

On November 22 two men were sentenced to death for allegedly clashing with security forces.

According to state run media in Iran , 120 people were hanged in public during a recent six-month period.

At the briefing, Farangis, a former political prisoner described her experience and treatment by Revolutionary Guards in three different prisons. She was born in 1959 in the southwestern Iranian city of Masjid Suleiman in Khuzistan province. She became a political activist after the revolution when she saw the nature of the regime that Khomeini was constructing. She now lives in the U.S. with her family.

In 1978, I was accepted to the Medical Sciences University in Ahwaz to study nursing. At the university, the students were pressured by Hezbollah to join their Islamic political movement. Within a year, the Shah was overthrown and Hezbollah called for a cultural revolution in support of the new Khomeini regime, which included a purge of students from the university who didn't support Khomeini. A number of students were arrested. They were abused and a few were executed. All the universities were then closed. I retuned home where I joined a union with other students to inform people about the activities of the regime.

At this time, my brother, who was 17 at the time, became politically active. He was later arrested in 1982, and within five months I was arrested also for political activity. During questioning, they tortured us to get information. When we would not answer their questions they said that since you are Muslims and you are not answering our questions you are subject to “tazir” –flogging. They lashed us 150 times with cables.

When I was whipped, I felt the pain for the first few lashes, then after the 12th or 13 th ones, my body would go numb. Eventually, I would faint or freeze so that I couldn't move. Then they would throw me back in the cell. At night, they took us out of the cells and make us stand on one leg in the hall. When we got so tired we put my legs down, they lashed us. I fainted from this routine a couple of times.

They kept us blindfolded when we were in the hall so we couldn't see what was happening. Several times, I felt something burning my hands. I didn't know what it was at the time, but later I learned that they put their cigarettes out on us. You can still see the scars on my hands. [Farangis held up her hands to the audience.]

They held a kangaroo court for the political prisoners. They placed a paper in front of me with 40 charges against me listed on it. I was forced to sign it. I was sentenced to four years in prison.

The arrest of my brother and I placed a lot of pressure on my family. My father became physically and mentally ill. He eventually had a heart attack and died. In prison, when I heard about my father's death, I was not allowed to cry. Later, when they put me in solitary confinement, I could cry. As a result of the physical treatment and mental stress, I became paralyzed in parts of my body. I couldn't talk, eat, or take care of myself. My mother requested that I be taken to a hospital, but they wouldn't do it. They released me from solitary confinement and put me back in a cell with other women. The other prisoners helped me to take care of myself and used physical therapy to help me regain the use of my body.