What happens to queer individuals in Iranian prisons? In this report, Rezvaneh Mohammadi, who was a political prisoner in Iran, writes about prison conditions in Iran for LGBTQ+ people and in particular draws on the personal experiences of five trans and lesbian individuals.
The experience of each Iranian citizen who undergoes arrest by the judicial system and endured detention varies depending on multiple factors. The particularities can include the local conduct of the juridical and the police entity that makes the arrest or makes an arraignment for custody, the detainee’s city of residence, their financial status, religious beliefs, gender identity, and sexuality strongly impact how the individual experiences arrest and imprisonment.
Queer and trans people in Iran receive charges or arraignments in civil, criminal and political and security cases. The Iranian civil law allows for gender affirmation for transgender individuals. If a trans individual goes through or starts the gender affirmation procedure, the authorities involved can give them a permit known on the streets as the “clothing license” that grants the trans person the permission to enter the public with the choice of attire the law accredits to their chosen gender.
However, an arrest can be brutal for a trans or queer individual in Iran. Upon being arrested and transferred to detention centers or jails, queer and trans individuals face hell. Not only trans individuals but also citizens with alternative gender expressions are confronted with multiple complications and obstacles when arrested. In this report, three eyewitnesses narrate what happens to queer individuals in the prisons of Iran.
The Story of Baran: “We do not have any extra Blankets for You.”
Atena Daemi, an Iranian human rights activist and political prisoner who in 2017 served part of her sentence in the Qarchek prison in the city of Varamin, met Baran, a transgender inmate in this prison (Baran is a pseudonym). Daemi was being kept with Baran and other inmates at the quarantine ward of the Qarchek prison. Baran was approximately 35 years old and she had started the gender confirmation process with the support of her mother. However, following financial difficulties, and eventually being rejected by her family, Baran became homeless. She began selling drugs to make a living, and after a while, Baran started using. In the winter of 2017, she was arrested for the umpteenth time and transferred to Qarchak prison where she met Daemi.
The prison authorities in Iran usually keep new inmates in the Quarantine and Baran was locked up in the prison’s quarantine ward for three days. Besides the challenges all detainees face struggles such as the lack of hygiene and the prison’s refusal to provide medical facilities for individuals undergoing the process of mandatory sobriety and rehabilitation – Baran also faced additional difficulties due to her gender identity.
Insults, disrespect, and threats of deportation to section four, a section for prisoners accused of violent crimes, are examples of the visible issues Baran faced. She was continuously ridiculed by prison officers.
Atena Daemi talks about a cold night in prison:
“One night, the air conditioner and heater units that were placed on the prison’s rooftop had malfunctioned it was really cold and. Instead of warm air, cold air was coming into the ward. They had given all prisoners, including myself, only one blanket. Baran complained several times about the freezing air. She asked them to give us blankets and give us space heaters. For her, it was even more challenging to bear the cold because her body was undergoing changes caused by mandatory sobriety and she was feeling overall pain. At the time, a snowstorm closed down the roads and we did not even have our cigarette supply. There was nothing to relieve Baran’s pain.”
According to Daemi, instead of handling the situation and providing heating devices, the prison guards began insulting and disrespecting Baran. This human rights activist emphasizes that these insults specifically targeted Baran’s gender and sexual identity. The guard’s insults eventually lead to a verbal conflict between the officer and Daemi who defended Baran.
Daemi further explains “The guard told Baran ‘It is unclear whether you’re a girl or a boy. Your kind must be killed, you are not human’. And other insults that targeted her drug use and homelessness.”
After both Baran and Daemi were transferred to a separate ward, Daemi succeeded to see Baran one more time:
“I saw Baran for the last time in the main ward (to which we had both been deported shortly prior to our encounter). Her face was completely burned. She did not tell me what had happened to her face. When I asked her about it she started crying and left. The incarcerated workers (prisoners who are employed at the prison and are paid for their labor) told me that when Baran was working in the prison’s service and cleaning department she tried to take her own life by pouring hydrochloric acid onto herself.”
Daemi also talks about another trans woman and she met in the prison clinic:
“I did not talk to her myself but the ward representative told me that the prison staff had all gone to look at her body and see how her body had turnout. The trans inmate had undergone gender affirmation surgery and now was the subject of prison staff and guards’ gaze. All of these are forms of harassment.”
A Judge that Forced a Lesbian Prisoner to Marry a Man
This is the story of a lesbian person who was forced into marriage with a man in the prison’s judgment enforcement room.
A couple of years ago, two incarcerated women met at the women’s ward of Lakan prison of the city of Rasht, in Northern Iran. The women began a romantic relationship which continued after they were released. Not only their ward mates but also one of the individual’s family knew of this relationship.
Shortly after, one of them was convicted and incarcerated once again.
Atena Daemi, who, for a period of time was exiled to Lakan prison in Rasht talks about the prevalence of same-sex relations in Iranian women’s prisons:
“In all public prisons, the number of these relationships is relatively high but this does not mean that the conditions under which relationships between inmates unfold are normal. What eventually made me sad, was when they forced this lesbian woman to marry a man. The prosecutor of Fuman (a city in the proximity of Rasht in the Gilan province), who apparently was aware of this person’s sexual orientation and homosexuality, ruled that she is only allowed prison leave and furlough on the condition that she marries a man. This person grew up in an orphanage and had no one outside of prison except for her partner. Eventually, she did a sham marriage with her partner’s brother in the prison’s judgment enforcement office so that she could use her furlough rights.”
The Story of Adine: a Man who was Banned to Speak Effeminately
Samaneh (pseudonym) is another civil activist and former political prisoner who spent a period in Qarchak prison, Varamin. This story happens in 2018 when Samaneh befriended Adine a trans woman who was an inmate in Qarchak prison. Adine due to her gender identity, was retained in a separate cell in the quarantine ward of Qarchak prison. She was being kept far away from the other prisoners. This was not her first arrest. Prior to changing her identification documents affirming her gender, she had been arrested and transferred to Great Tehran Penitentiary (another prison in Alborz province).
Samaneh talks about her encounter with Adine:
“As far as I know, Adine brought her hormones into prison. Bringing hormone therapy into prison was faced with opposition. The prison authorities were planning to transfer her to Evin prison’s trans ward, which eventually happened. But until that day, she was in quarantine, and we all knew of her problems. For example, her cell was unhygienic and. The principle of separation of crimes was not executed [according to which maximum security inmates should not be kept with other inmates]. Moreover, every prisoner who is in quarantine for a while has less access to telephone communications with loved ones, compared to those in other wards. The quarantine kept inmates do not have visiting rights and shopping from the prison shop becomes challenging for them.”
Evin prison, the city of Tehran’s main prison where many political prisoners are kept, is the only prison system in Iran that has a trans ward. So far, at least two spaces as exclusively for trans individuals in this prison. The first ward is ward 240 in which trans detainees and prisoners are kept in spaces that resemble solidarity confinement cells. In these cells, they are beaten and insulted by prison guards. The guards’ constant transphobic insults and violence are not the only obstacles. They are deprived of sunlight, exercise and yard time and access to the prison shop.
In recent years, Evin prison has added a less official second trans ward. Slone One is now exclusively keeping tans inmates. A while ago, the hacker group Ali’s Justice published a number of videos from this prison’s surveillance cameras that showed the horrific circumstances under which trans inmates are being kept. In this space, even though imprisoned individuals are sporadically allowed yard time and access to the prison shop, some prisoners do not have access to gender affirmation therapies they started prior to prison including hormones. Prison guards use excessive violence, beatings and harassing trans inmates. It is important to take into account that many trans individuals begin taking hormones after the start of their transiting process. The sudden stop of hormones can cause depression and the return of unwanted secondary sex characteristics.
Adine was arrested for beating a man. Her verdict had not been issued and in the meanwhile, she was being kept in isolation. According to Samaneh who witnesses Adine’s problems firsthand, the prison authorities constantly misgendered Adine:
“They did not even recognize her as a woman. If she talked to the prison officers, they addressed her as sir and told her to keep a distance. When maintenance workers entered the ward they ordered us all to put on hijabs, but would not tell Adine to do so. In some cases, they even made fun of her and said ‘Men shouldn’t speak so effeminately’!”
Samaneh also talks about other inmates’ treatment of Adine:
“When older prisoners, of which there were many, went to the shower and saw Adine there, they screamed and threw her out. The younger inmates, however, were more familiar with trans individual’s struggles and behaved better.”
The Enigma of Masculinity in Women’s Prisons
Besides trans-woman prisoners, there were also queer individuals and trans men who had either not tried to obtain a license affirming their gender or were in the midst of this procedure. In some cases, these individuals had not yet received documents affirming their gender identity because the procedure had not yet been completed.
Similar to other trans individuals, Morteza, a trans man in Qarchak prison faced prison officers’ pressure and insults. He had completed a number of surgical procedures. However, his arrest disrupted the procedure. Samaneh explains the overall situation of trans men in prison:
“In general, having short hair, which meant hair that was shorter than what they defined as short, was banned in prison. Shaving your head and wearing men’s clothes was also banned. Each time you broke these laws, depending on how often you repeated these acts, they would, firstly, punish you by banning your access to the phone. Sometimes they banned your access for one day, but other times it went up to a month. Secondly, which was worst than banning telephone access, was revoking your visitation rights. If all of this did not prevent you from continuing the banned acts, the last step would be transferring your case to the courts of Mashahad, known for being notoriously harsh.”
She adds:
“Prison officers’ looked at trans individuals, always laughing at them and not taking their struggles seriously. They for example joked saying ‘if you are a man, why do you take feminine hygiene products every month.’ They wanted to insult them. Or they would page their names and say Mister X and soon after say, no no, X is a woman. Trans prisoners would of course get very angry. These kinds of harassment could result in physical fights between guards and inmates.”
Samaneh talks about how prisons did not provide any privacy to trans and queer inmates:
“Romantic and sexual relationships emerging among inmates was not uncommon. But at Qarchak prison, because of the ban on curtains, it was challenging for inmates to be intimate without guards or ward representatives noticing.”
According to this civil activist and former political prisoner, “if prisoners were caught when being intimate, they would be punished by being sent to the solitary confinement cell for three days. Recently, I heard that they have put rings on the walls of these cells, and prisoners were handcuffed and bound to the wall during the time they were kept there.”
The Story of Shervina and the Nights of Solitary Confinement
Zahra Sadeqi, a former prisoner who was also exiled to Qarchak prison from 2019 until 2020, speaks of a trans woman called Shervina, the memories of her multiple arrests and the conditions of her detention. Despite the fact that Shervina had completed the gender affirmation surgery and obtained documents that were in accordance with her gender identity, instead of being transferred to the public ward, she was put in solitary confinement.
Sadeqi says:
“As far as I remember from our conversations, she had at least been arrested and put in solitary confinement once in Esfahan, and also once in Tehran in Vozara detention center. The places in which she was retained were not even created for detainees and did not serve the purpose of solitary confinement. They were dirty and unhygienic, contaminated spaces. According to Shervina the floor of the space was even wet. Being kept in solitary confinement is an issue, being withheld from a clean space and under inhuman conditions is another issue.”
In Iran, the general belief is that trans people’s status is sanctioned by law. But in reality, besides the brief referring to trans people’s general legal status in the family support bill, the issue of trans individuals’ legal status has never been discussed in detail. It is, thus, left in an oasis of ambiguity that allows for officers’ personal preferences to decide over trans prisoners’ fates and what happens to them in prison.
Many trans citizens have also experienced this lawlessness and the lack of uniform national measures when undergoing the process of obtaining a license that affirms their gender or when changing their identification documents. These individuals describe the process of obtaining a license or changing documents as similar to the way things went in ancient tribal kingdoms where the taste of the judge or the official of each department plays a decisive role in the ease and speed of the process. By examining the numerous narratives of detention and the conditions under which trans people are retained in prison, the lack of uniform criteria for how and where trans people are detained becomes apparent. The difference in the treatment of trans citizens in different detention centers and the varying conditions of detention in a single prison throughout different time periods shows the lack of official will to organize and better the issues that dominate prisons in Iran.
