Reviewing Narges Mohammadi's White Torture (November 2023)

In her Preface to White Torture: Interviews with Iranian Women Prisoners (translated into English in 2022), Narges Mohammadi explains that,

On 16 November 2021, I was arrested for the twelfth time and sentenced to solitary confinement for the fourth time in my life. I spent sixty-four days in confinement in Ward 209 of Evin Prison, run by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence. This time I was found guilty because of the book you are holding in your hands—White Torture. They accused me of blackening the name of Iran across the world.

White Torture puts Mohammadi in the company of political dissidents such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Liao Yiwu who experienced their states' carceral systems and wrote about the human rights abuses they witnessed and endured. Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned in Stalin's Gulag from 1945-1953 and recorded his experience in the three-part Gulag Archipelago and other writings. More recently, Liao Yiwu, was incarcerated in the early 1990s for his outrage at the Chinese government's massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989. A poet and oral historian, he collected stories which were eventually published in For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet's Journey Through a Chinese Prison— outside the People's Republic of China, for all his books are banned there.

In her introduction to White Torture, historian Shannon Woodcock writes that,

Torture is not new in Iranian society or prisons. Scholars ... have documented how men in Iran have used a wide range of torture methods against those they incarcerated throughout the last century. (It should also be noted that the governments of the United States of America, the United Kingdom and myriad other states have also relied on torture within prisons to control.)

The reference to the U.S. is most directly borne out by the 'enhanced interrogation' strategies and techniques—bureaucratic speak for torture—used extensively during America's post-9/11 War on Terror.

Among the 14 women whose interviews appear in the book, there are those arrested and incarcerated for their political views or their religious views. There were no 'ordinary' criminals whose crimes involved murder, violent crime, child abuse; fraud, theft, arson, drug trafficking, prostitution, etc. There was Narges herself, a political activist against capital punishment and the use of solitary confinement in prisons; Nigara, a Turkmenistan citizen, arrested for espionage after being lured by her estranged husband to collect their daughter and take her back to Turkmenistan; Atena, a children's rights activist; Zahra, a sociologist, accused of being connected to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq on account of a photo of her father who had been executed for supporting the group; Nazanin, a British-Iranian citizen on a two-week trip to Iran; Mahvash and Sima, members of the Baháʼí community; Hengameh, a journalist and women’s rights activist; Reyhaneh, a journalist, political activist and supporter of a reformist political party; Fatemeh, a convert to Christianity; Sedigheh charged with moharebeh [waging war against God] and links to anti-government groups; Nazila and Shokoufeh, dervishes (ascetic Sufi Muslims); and Marzieh, a women’s rights activist and economics journalist.

The 'white torture' elicited from Mohammadi's interviews reveals that it is a deliberate manipulation of the prison environment and experience to "permanently break the connection between a person’s body and mind in order to force the individual to recant their ethics and actions." Sensory stimulation is withheld. For example, prisoners are frequently blindfolded when they are taken into custody, and once imprisoned, they must wear blindfolds when they are escorted from the cells to the bathroom or the interrogation room. Their sense of the rhythm of day and night is disrupted by limited access to daylight and fresh air and the ever-present light bulb that burns 24 hours a day. The filthy conditions of the cells, especially when there is a toilet, always poorly maintained, in the same living space where prisoners eat from their metal meal bowls and sleep, not on beds or even cots, but on concrete floors softened only by a rough army blanket. The food is tasteless and doesn't change from day to day. Tea is provided in plastic cups. Tap water is available but when there's no toilet in the cell, prisoners must request permission to be escorted to a public toilet, and the guards are not always obliging. Furthermore, the tap water is not considered safe to drink.

Solitary confinement in a tiny space where there is often not enough room to walk around without hitting a wall exacerbates the daily assault on the senses. Not only that, communication is controlled—the guards being instructed not to speak to the prisoners. In solitary, sounds from outside are mostly blocked. The call to prayer is the only reliable timepiece. Occasionally, custodians will be heard cleaning the corridor, but they don't speak either. One is left with one's thoughts, and sometimes a Qur'an is left in the cell, and when it is then prisoners like Zahra devour it, reading from beginning to end 14 times during her yearlong solitary confinement.

The interrogation sessions are staged to exaggerate the asymmetrical power relationship between the interrogator and the prisoner. First, prisoners are usually sleep-deprived, malnourished, sick or in pain. Then sometimes the session are canceled with no notice. Other times, a session are called with no notice. Sessions can be terminated at a whim by the interrogator. Often the prisoner has to sit facing the wall as the interrogator looks on from his desk. There are threats and insults and badgering to force the disclosure of irrelevant and highly personal details. The prisoner was always kept off balance. Fear is the cruelest weapon in the interrogator's arsenal of torture. Lifelong imprisonment with no chance for a trial let alone an appeal isn't even the worst threat. Threats of imminent execution hang in the air. "Will I be executed at the end of this session?" Women prisoners are controlled through their families, especially their children. "Will they really do that to my children if I don't cooperate?"

Despite the longest of odds against them, these women, the ones who gave interviews, persevered. Not all did. Not all could. The following extended quotes are provided to give some indication of their courage and endurance when face to face with a brutal and inflexible regime of the soulless and sadistic, many of whose names and titles have been recorded for international sanctions and maybe even prosecution one day.

Marzieh, in response to the question, "How did you resist and what factors helped to increase your resistance?"

A woman’s lived experience helps her. The ‘strong will’ I talked about has different meanings for interrogated people in relation to the oppression they have experienced. The caring characteristic that has historically been entrusted to women is a good guide to building a ‘strong will’ in a feminine way. Under the conditions of interrogation, this familiar characteristic of women’s morale can make it possible for her inner sense of responsibility to emerge. Then she will take care of herself and of those who are emotionally and politically close to her. In an unequal situation of one person dominating, you either have to follow or be dominated. In the highly unequal and unjust situation created by the interrogator, a woman who herself has been wounded by a more generally unequal situation can develop resistance that is rooted in her daily experience.

Hengameh, in response to the question, "Did you go on hunger strike during these two arrests?"

During my first detention I went on a hunger strike when I lost hope of freedom. I went on strike for eight days. I was taken to the Revolutionary Court and to Judge Pir Abbasi. I was very weak and felt semi-conscious. I was so sick that they brought medical help. Seeing my physical condition, he promised to release me on bail and asked me to end the strike. I told him I’d do so only if they upheld habeas corpus [the right against arbitrary and open-ended detention]. I ended my strike when they did so and was released the same night.

Mahvash, in response to the question, "How do you feel about prison now, after almost ten years?"

I have two contradictory emotions: the feeling of physical exhaustion and fatigue from oppression and cruelty, and a strong spiritual conviction, a sense of love for all human beings and a firm faith in them. Also, the feeling of being away from my family and friends, and the joy of finding valuable friends in prison and gaining unique experiences that would not have been possible without enduring all this suffering. In other words, there is this feeling of isolation from society and loneliness in prison, and there is an opposite feeling of having experienced a difficult but meaningful collective life. The experience of prison is long, special and unique: a life steeped in suffering, deprivation and loneliness. It is an experience of carrying the burden of injustice and enduring bitter and naked immorality. Life in prison is based on the denial of all natural and human needs, but at the same time it opens the doors of poetry, thought and meaning in the heart and soul. It’s a way of achieving belief and certainty in the ultimate victory of truth; it’s the ascetic experience of finding Haqq al-Yaqin. Life in prison, if it is to end with discovering a steadfast and noble faith, makes you more stable and prouder than before.

As of the writing of this review, Mohammadi remains in prison, and the Nobel Peace Prize that she was awarded in 2023 will be received by her twins, Ali and Kiana, who will also deliver the Nobel Prize lecture on behalf of their mother.