Twenty-two female prisoners of conscience in Tehran’s Evin Prison have publicly called for an end to the sexual harassment of inmates during physical inspections in Iranian prisons. They have warned that they will protest further if the prison authorities do not address their demands.
These prisoners published a statement on the Instagram page of Narges Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and political prisoner in Iran. These women who are women human rights defenders, labor rights defenders, and ethnic and religious minority prisoners have previously launched a campaign for “solidarity against sexual harassment,” urging the Iranian public to join them in protesting the use of sexual harassment as a weapon by security forces against protesters and political prisoners.
In their most recent statement, these political prisoners wrote:
We, a group of women political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Evin Prison, protest the unconventional body searches and sexual harassment experienced by some inmates during these procedures. We demand that the authorities address this situation; if they do not respond, we will protest further.
The statement was signed by Sarvnaz Ahmadi, Anisha Asadollahi, Samaneh Asghari, Reyhaneh Ansarinejad, Golrokh Irayei, Sakine Parvaneh, Nahid Khodajo, Nasrin Khezri Javadi, Rahela Rahmipour, Vida Rabbani, Nasrin Roshan, Nasim Simiyari, Saeedeh Shafiei, Mahvash Shahriari, Pakhshan Azizi, Saeeda Gorbanali, Maryam Yahyavi, Verishe Moradi, Paryosh Moslimi, Masoume Nassajji, Hora Nikbakht, and Narges Mohammadi.
The campaign from within Iranian prisons is supported by documentation from human rights organizations outside Iran, which show that Iranian authorities use excessive force, assault, and sexual harassment as tools against protesters, including during torture and forced confessions. Amnesty International, in December 2023, detailed how security forces used rape and sexual violence to suppress the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in Iran, emphasizing the lack of accountability for these actions.
The campaign against the weaponization of sexual harassment by Iranian authorities has been ongoing since summer 2024. Dozens of female prisoners and activists have joined the fight against sexual harassment in prisons. In the summer of 2024, some of these prisoners supported Narges Mohammadi, who faced new charges for revealing sexual assault against an inmate called Dina Ghalibaf. In objection to the new charges against Mohammadi, they stated:
Many of us, the signatories of this statement—journalists, human rights activists, feminist advocates, and others—have heard, recorded, and published the narratives of individuals sexually assaulted by government forces during the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement. Some of us have personally experienced this violence in prisons, during detention, and interrogations. We believe these stories should remain in our collective memory. We stand with other female prisoners of Evin Prison in condemning the retrial of Narges Mohammadi and assert that sexual violence is systematically used as a means of elimination and suppression against detained protesters. We will continue to document and share the stories of sexual harassment endured by detainees over the years, from the 1980s to the present.
Detained protesters, including those arrested during the nationwide “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests or charged with opposing mandatory hijab laws, have testified to being sexually assaulted by officers at various stages of their detention. Over the past four decades, numerous accounts of rape and sexual harassment of women in Iranian government prisons have emerged. For example, Dina Ghalibaf, a student activist and journalist, was arrested after publicly stating that she had been sexually assaulted by officers during her arrest. Narges Mohammadi, from prison, testified that: “Dina Ghalibaf was brought into the women’s ward of Evin Prison with bruises and her story of sexual assault.” These statements resulted in new charges against Narges Mohammadi.
