Elaheh Ejbari, 22, was kidnapped on the street and held for 4 days after participating in a protest in Tehran following the dying of Mahsa Amini, who died whereas in custody of Iran’s morality police. Ejbari, who comes from Iran’s Baluchestan area on the border with Pakistan, says she was subjected to sexual violence and humiliation, partly resulting from her ethnicity.
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Mahsa Amini was the identical age as me – 22. Like me, she got here from a provincial city. I grew up in Baluchestan. Her dying made me very offended. I noticed myself in her, and immediately I wished to protest.
Life was already very tough for me in Tehran, however I felt safer there than in Baluchestan. To know this type of factor was additionally taking place within the capital was terrible.
I used to be married on the age of 16. It wasn’t a consensual marriage. I left as quickly as I may. With out my husband realizing, I ready for the doorway exams on the College of Tehran and I used to be accepted into the psychology programme. I ran away to the capital.
He tried to take me again by power, however with the assistance of some attorneys that I met at college, we managed to get him to surrender and I used to be lastly in a position to break up after three years.
‘I used to be so beside myself that I threw away my veil’
I believed when coming to reside in Tehran that ladies could be thought of equals right here, that life could be less complicated. I had put the blame for all my distress on my household, which could be very conventional. However I discovered the arduous method that it’s the system that desires our society to be like this, that orders come from the highest.
After the dying of Mahsa Amini and the primary protests, the town was crawling with safety forces. We noticed males with weapons in all places, particularly on the entrances to the subway. I wasn’t carrying a veil anymore, I didn’t even have something masking my shoulders – I had put it away in my bag. As soon as, an agent made a comment and I discovered myself insulting him. We had been so offended that despite the fact that these armed males had been there, we stored shouting, “Lady, life, freedom”.
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They threw teargas proper in entrance of me throughout one of many demonstrations within the centre of Tehran. I turned my head and I noticed a lady my age being crushed on the bottom. My coronary heart started to race, I didn’t suppose, I threw myself between her and the policeman. He knocked me out with a single blow. Three boys got here from I don’t know the place. They claimed to be my brothers, bargained with the policeman and obtained me out of there. “Get that slut out of my sight,” the officer stated.
The boys took me to a facet avenue and lit a cigarette to assist dissipate the results of the teargas that had burned my eyes. They gave me one thing to drink. It was the primary time that males had sorted me. I felt that their hearts had been as heavy as mine.
In Baluchestan, the ladies don’t even eat in the identical room as the boys. I spent so many meals alone within the kitchen. I had no telephone, no satellite tv for pc TV. In my household, I had at all times been a shame – they had been ashamed that I used to be finding out, ashamed that I used to be divorced.
‘They insulted me as a result of I’m Baluch’
In Tehran, I earned cash by giving language courses to younger individuals. Generally I bought spices on the street, in Revolution Sq..
On December 5, I used to be coming from having simply given a category within the Tehranpars neighbourhood (within the capital’s east). Some males threw me right into a van. To at the present time, I nonetheless don’t know who they had been precisely. They locked me up in a spot I couldn’t establish. They took my garments off and minimize my hair. They made enjoyable of my darkish pores and skin. They insulted me as a result of I’m Baluch (an ethnic minority usually discriminated in opposition to by the Iranian authorities).
They didn’t perceive how a Baluch lady had managed to flee and reside by her personal means within the capital. They suspected me of receiving funding from opposition teams.
They accused me of being a consultant of the Baluch trigger in Tehran and representing Imam Molavi Abdolhamid (a Sunni chief of the Baluch). I laughed of their faces, telling them that I didn’t know the Baluch had progressed to the purpose of selecting a lady to characterize them. That’s once they hit me. They had been touching my physique they usually had been saying to me: “You want that. You say, ‘Lady, life, freedom’ – you wish to be utterly bare, is that your slogan? So that you prefer it. You need to be thanking us.” They stored on saying that they wouldn’t kill me, however that they’d ship me again to Baluchestan so my uncles would care for that themselves.
‘I couldn’t return to a standard life’
After 4 days they threw me into the road. My associates had all been frightened about me, that they had gone to all of the morgues and alerted the media.
I attempted to return to a standard life however I couldn’t. My college students cancelled their classes, one after one other. The proprietor of my condominium requested me to go away. I don’t know in the event that they had been pressured or in the event that they had been simply afraid. I collected all the cash that I had and I left for the airport, the place I obtained on a flight for Turkey, with out realizing if I’d have the ability to make it.
Trying again, I realise that the boys who took me knew who I used to be. I had already spent two months in Evin Jail for fuelling “propaganda in opposition to the regime”. I used to be thought of a girls’s rights activist as a result of I’m preventing to ban little one marriage in Iran (the minimal authorized age is 13 for women) and likewise due to my posts on Instagram.
Fortunately, I used to be in a position to go to Turkey and I’m now residing in a European nation. Abroad, I met individuals who perceive me higher. As a result of even in Tehran, the opposite ladies didn’t know what I had endured.
I’m seeing a psychologist and that helps me loads. Even right this moment, after I see a van decelerate – even right here – I get scared.
This text has been translated from the unique in French.