“Starred” student activist endures more abuse

By Siavosh Jalili and Maryam Nayeb Yazdi

Persian2English – On Friday, Zia Nabavi, the “starred” education advocacy activist held illegally in exile, was violently transferred along with 59 other political prisoners to another section (ward 8) of Karoun prison (in Ahvaz city) which holds people held on theft and drug-related charges.

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Several months ago, Zia Nabavi had written an open letter to Mohammad Larijani, the Head of the Human Rights Council for Iran’s Judiciary, detailing the gruesome conditions in Karoun prison’s ward 1, the area reserved for political prisoners. Shortly after the publication of the letter, Zia and other political prisoners were transferred to Ahvaz Clinic, a detention center with slightly better conditions. However, sometime between July to September, Zia and numerous others were secretly transferred back to ward 1 in Karoun prison. According to the latest reports, Zia and many other political prisoners are crammed into a small space in ward 8, and the conditions are far worse- in terms of hygiene and population density- than ward 1. Additionally, 15 of the transferred political prisoners have no bed to sleep on.
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Initially, the political prisoners, including Zia Nabavi, had resisted the transfer to the drug-addict ward, however, when the Iranian Special Guards forces violently invaded their cell, they were forced to move. Ward 1 is now being used to hold prisoners with tuberculosis.
The 60 political prisoners have announced that they will launch a mass indefinite hunger strike if they are not immediately transferred to a ward especially for political prisoners.

Last month when Zia Nabavi was still in Ahvaz Clinic, he wrote a letter about how the overall prison experience has changed his perspective on political concepts. In the first section of the letter, he explains how his main concern altered during imprisonment: “If my main preoccupation before my arrest and imprisonment was freedom, my largest concern inside prison is security and safety…once in prison, I found democracy valuable [only] when interpreted and defined as the “rule of law”. Throughout the different stages of my incarceration and interrogations, the most important political question I have pondered is: how can a person be bound to respect limits and boundaries, [to avoid] the infliction of harm on others?

The young education advocacy activist demonstrates how he had to replace a more complicated notion and interpretation of freedom with a more basic concept of the rule of law, once he found himself stripped of his liberty and security: “If before prison my preoccupation with complex aspects of freedom tied me to post-constructionists like Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, the prison experience has made me sympathetic to John Locke and Thomas Hobbs- their main preoccupations were the law and the social contract.”
Zia Nabavi describes his conditions in Karoun prison: “At times I feel like I am living on the brink of what distinguishes a human’s life from an animal’s.”

Zia Nabavi claims that his “biggest talent in social relationships” is his ability to speak the same language as people with differing interests and tastes from him. He says: “…during my student years, I was the connecting point between people who had different, and at times opposing views.” He continues that he discovered the concept of sympathy when he was not allowed to talk or express his views during detention and interrogations. Zia believes that “when two people are involved in a conflict, they should not bring each other down to the subject of the conflict…because [a conflict] situation has the potential of exploding into violence.”

Zia Nabavi then goes on to share his take on the various political and civil activists he met in prison. He concludes with the thought: “I have developed a very critical view toward political dissidents and the opposition in the [Iranian] society…[They] are not bad people…but it does not mean that they can be considered democratic [in their conduct and their views].”
At the end of the first section of his letter Zia Nabavi offers three characteristics he believes that a democratic person must possess:

1- The ability to enter the public domain, and take responsibility to solve the common problems of [the civil society].

2- The ability to commit to critical discussion, and respect and yield to the collective wisdom in the public decision-making processes.

3- The ability to respect the privacy of individuals, and recognize and sympathize with their differences in this area.

In the second part of his letter, Zia Nabavi engages in self-criticism, and offers an analytic critique of the issues he discussed in the first part of his letter.

The full translated text of Zia Nabavi’s letter will be published shortly.