Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish women’s rights activist imprisoned in Iran’s Evin prison for almost a year, was sentenced to death on 23 July by the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, for membership of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK). Azizi wrote a letter from prison, in the third person, titled ‘Hiding the truth and its alternative’. In her letter, written in Persian and translated by Medya News, Azizi narrates her harrowing experience of detention and torture by Iran’s intelligence service agencies. The letter, sent from prison before her death sentence was issued, provides a chilling account of her condition in solitary confinement.
Hiding the truth and its alternative
From childhood, she learned the struggle for survival through her mother’s stories and lullabies, which conveyed the essence of life and freedom. Her mother’s soothing voice helped her grow and mature despite the hardships.
For a long time, she lived in a relentless quest to stay alive, to find a way of being, and to discover the meaning of existence. One scorching summer, about 20 people burst into her aunt’s house, using state intimidation tactics, believing they had arrested a terrorist. With her hands tied and a gun to her head, the 17-year-old, visiting her aunt for the first time in ten years, was thrown to the ground along with three other family members. Her captors mounted her and her family with smiles, signifying power and triumph.
Scenes of massacres and destruction of thousands of Kurdish-Syrian families played like a tragic movie before her eyes.
There was a race between life and death. In extreme physical weakness, she clung to the walls of her solitary cell to keep from falling. She had been imprisoned in the same cell in 2009 on the same charges of “being Kurdish” and “being a woman”.
She could hear her father’s coughing from Ward 3. He had recently undergone surgery for a cancerous tumour and suffered a stroke. She worried about his condition and that of her two other family members.
On the first day of interrogation, they offered to settle the case quietly without going to court!…
She was hanged several times during the interrogation, buried ten meters underground, and brought out again, considering her disillusionment and brokenness. Historical memory is filled with these events. From childhood, she was labelled a separatist and a member of the second sex, never recognised as a proper citizen. For the central authority, the Kurds are insignificant, count for nothing, but for their sentences, they bear the heaviest and greatest weight.
Once again during her interrogation, her disillusionment and brokenness are pointed out to her.
A human being is defined by their gender (the first dimension of perception), their language, culture, art, management, freedom, way of life, and overall ideology. When any of these dimensions of life are aborted or cut off, there is no room left for a human life. If you abort a woman’s will, as a dignified human being, there is no longer any room for a free life. This signifies a decline in human-ethical-political standards, where life, devoid of its own identity, becomes defensive, and enters into a stage of rebellion.
She is repeatedly slammed into the chair. Insults, humiliations, and threats fill the room, exacerbated by the worst psychological and physical conditions resulting from a prolonged hunger strike and five months of solitary confinement, the most dreadful form of white torture, where the pressures of identity and history come to rest. This torture is but a small drop in the ocean of history, with the interrogator’s clenched fists asserting his authority as a statesman each time. His roar becomes a shout: ‘Why do you conceal the truth?!’
You have concealed the most profound social truth: the essence of womanhood, her identity, her Kurdishness, her life, and her freedom. What truth and what concealment are you talking about?!
Authoritarianism, sexism, and religious extremism are the root causes of social, political, economic, and cultural crises. Therefore, these causes cannot be the solution. It is the people themselves who possess the social and political consciousness and will be needed to overcome these crises. Concealing the truth about women, Kurds, and all marginalised communities, along with succumbing to historical distortions, represents the greatest concealment of truth.
It’s not just the Kurds who face issues; there is a larger problem at play. The difference between the centre (مركز) and the periphery (مرز) lies in a single letter: ‘K’ (ك). This letter represents the concealment of truth, and this concealment is rooted in the centre itself.
Simply ignoring a problem instead of addressing it can never be a solution. Destroying the potential of women and marginalised communities out of fear and intimidation is unacceptable. Democracy and politics should never fear challenging social realities that have a rich historical memory of genocide, denial, and annihilation.
She has been in solitary confinement for months, with frequent bleeding and constant hunger strikes, and her health is in critical condition. Is there anything else to do besides draining one’s strength to extract information? She repeats aloud to herself that she is a small drop in a vast ocean whose flow is inevitable. She massages her legs to be able to stand. She rises, falls, and it’s not unpredictable; we’ve embarked on this journey with these ups and downs. This is the meaning of our lives: the pain that doesn’t kill makes us stronger. We have felt and lived the essence of life on the edge of existence and non-existence with all our being.
The first corpse she saw was Khadija, whose hands were tied and who was burned by her husband and brother. She vowed never to stop defending women’s rights. Thousands of women and children saw men beheaded before their eyes during ISIS attacks, and they were taken captive and raped. The culture of rape inflicted upon women, mothers holding their infants as their milk dried up, and barefoot children—hundreds of whom were laid chest to chest on the rocks of Shengal—was widely reported in the media. This crime against humanity is so vast that it cannot be fully captured even in hundreds of books. Elsewhere, in Kobani and other places, dozens of women and children were burned and torn apart by Turkish airstrikes in Rojava, their bodies dismembered by ISIS attacks.
She wakes up abruptly, unable to rise, and starts vomiting—a purge of historical trauma.
Forced to sit down, the threats and humiliations resume. “Why did you go to Syria? Why didn’t you go to Europe?”
And the questioning continued! There’s a strong sense of attraction to the West. It seems he’s either talking about his dreams or being drawn towards what he longed for?!
After the disappointment and failure of the 2009 case, due to the stifling political and social environment, she found herself far from her homeland (the place that felt like a mother’s embrace). Life had lost its meaning. She moved to a place that also belonged to her (as you had said, Syrian Kurdistan is ours, as is Turkish and Iraqi Kurdistan). So, she didn’t go anywhere outside of what was rightfully hers. Beginning a new chapter for the Middle East, especially working in refugee camps, could have been the greatest moral and ethical contribution to a community that has long suffered under oppression. Performing such humanitarian work, which becomes revolutionary by crossing borders, were you there as well?
The voice rises: Is everyone there a member of the PKK?!
Labelling a social worker who adopted a humanitarian approach, free from oppression and viewed through a non-scientific, objective lens without essentialism, as a member of any organisation based on a few photos (showing weapons in the hands of women, the elderly, and young people in every home, neighbourhood, and camp during the height of the revolution)—it reflects a misunderstanding of the issue.
She initially believed in a revolutionary change of mindset and a shift in people’s worldviews, followed by structural changes. Within a revolution, naturally, one’s character is formed and shaped. Betrayal and heroism become more pronounced as they are tested within the context of social and political responsibilities. However, her work is different. Adopting a democratic and systematic approach, and rebuilding an ethical-political society through civic and humanitarian activities, provides more tangible solutions with higher practical value.
One must accept local differences, yet this does not equate to separatism. The system of a revolutionary mindset follows its own path. Democratising society involves democratising the family to overcome gender biases, democratising religion to move beyond religious dogmatism (not religious hostility), and democratising all existing institutions to prevent authoritarianism. This forms a common theoretical framework that avoids falling into dictatorship and purging the authentic traditions of the region’s peoples, which are a significant part of their identity and existence.
All her activities and efforts have been in the aim of serving and fulfilling her historical duty towards her lived experiences and historical oppressions. She firmly believes that the right way to achieve a democratic society is through a democratic approach to building an ethical-political society where people deliberate on social issues, make them their concerns, and find solutions. Maximum participation of people in solving society’s problems will ensure social cohesion and a way out of the crisis. This is the essence of living with the feminine knowledge that achieving democracy will lead to achieving freedom.
I am her. She is me. But I am a mere drop in the ocean. You are the ocean. Our flow is inevitable. We are unconcealed.
Pakhshan Azizi
July 2024, Evin Prison
