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InvisibleLuddite
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Registered: 03/23/06
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Iranian Dissidents Fight Back
    #6303451 - 11/20/06 05:00 PM (17 years, 4 months ago)

Iranian Dissidents Fight Back
By Erick Stakelbeck
CBN News Terror Analyst

CBNNews.com – WASHINGTON - To many Americans, Iran is the epitome of a terrorist state, home to waves of Islamic extremists. It is a place where calls for the destruction of America and Israel are a daily occurrence, and where the U.S. Embassy was once seized by thousands of angry young radicals.

But there's also another Iran, one largely hidden from Western eyes. It is an Iran where democracy activists are risking physical and mental torture, even death in their quest for freedom.

“I have been in and out of jail fighting for freedom in Iran since I was 17. All my friends are like this.” Iranian democracy activist Amir Abbas Fakhravar said.

Thirty-year-old Fakhraver is one of the leaders of the Independent Iranian Student Movement, which frequently protests against the ruling mullahs in cities across Iran.

“I want the world to see the real picture of the Iranian people. We are not terrorists...It is very important for Americans to realize the huge difference that exists between the people of Iran and their government,” said Fakhraver.

Fakhraver recently escaped from Iran, where he had been in and out of prison for the past several years. His crime? Calling on the people of Iran to reject the country's radical regime.

A former medical student and journalist, he's now in the U.S. He told CBN News about the brutal treatment he and other Iranian political prisoners endured.

“The first thing they do to the prisoners is they break them down. So before they ask them any questions, before anything, they break them down with white torture. That's the first step,” said Fakhraver.

“He [Fakhraver] survived one of the worst forms of torture called "white torture," which is a terrible psychological torture in which you're locked in a very small cell and then you do not hear anything, and everything you see is white. Everything from the food you eat, to the plates it's served on, to the walls, ceiling, floor--everything is white. So you're deprived of all sensual stimulation,” explained The American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen, an expert on Iran.

Fakhraver made it through this psychological torment. But he says it broke other political prisoners.

“Most of those who are subjected to this kind of treatment developed psychological illness,” Fakhraver said. “Even myself, after I was released from prison I had to go live in a forest away from society for many months, so I could regain my sense of myself and society.”

Fakhraver finally made it out of Iran alive after being on the run for months. But others haven't been so lucky.

Last month, a popular Iranian dissident named Akbar Mohammadi died in Tehran's Evin Prison. Iranian activists say he'd been tortured to death.
Mohammadi's death was condemned by the U.S. State Department and human rights groups worldwide. That didn't stop the Islamic republic from threatening to execute all of its political prisoners if the u.n. Security Council imposes sanctions over its nuclear program.

Ledeen said, “They beat up, arrest, torture, and kill people who energetically protest the regime. They filter, block, jam telephone conversations, television broadcasts, radio broadcasts, and Internet sites, so they're trying to eliminate any way the Iranian people can get accurate information.”

Roya Toloui is an Iranian Kurdish activist. She formerly published a newspaper supporting women's rights in Iran. That is, until last year, when she was falsely accused by Iranian officials of leading anti-regime protests.

Toloui was arrested at her home in front of her young children. A hard-line Islamist judge then sent her to one of Iran's notorious internal intelligence prisons.

“I begged the judge not to send me to the internal intelligence prison,” said Toloui, “because I had heard that they are very cruel and it's not a place where any human being wants to be. Even the driver who was driving me to the internal intelligence prison told me, 'I hope God is with you.'”

Toloui was held in solitary confinement for the first 17 days of her imprisonment.

She said, “...For hours and days, I was just there alone, without having anything--no paper, no books, no talk—nothing, with dead, deafening silence surrounding me. I can't explain it. It's maddening. You can go crazy easily.”

Interrogators tried to force her to confess that she had led the anti-regime protests. They also wanted her give the names of other dissidents.

“They would be slapping me around all the time,” Toloui said. “They put pencils in between my fingers and pressed to hurt me.

Still, Toloui wouldn't break. Until one of the regime's deputy prosecutors entered her cell.

“I told him, ‘What kind of person are you? Aren't you an Iranian? Aren't you my fellow Iranian? How can you do these things?’...He told me, 'I don't care about Iran, my nationality doesn't mean anything to me. The only thing I care about is Islam...,' she said.

What happened next is difficult for Toloui to discuss.

“Then he attacked me, started beating me up,” she recalled. “And from the fear of his beatings, I stepped back, and he pushed me against the wall of the small room. And I don't want to explain what he did to me. But he did the worst thing that any human being can tolerate and accept.”

Bleeding internally, Toloui was dragged back to her cell. Her captors then told her that if she didn't confess, they would "burn her children before her eyes."

Toloui said, “I gave up. Because the most important thing to me is my children. And I agreed to confess to whatever they wanted.”

She remained in prison for the next three months. She says she was finally released, thanks to pressure from international human rights and women's organizations. But she was forced to give to the regime her home, and all of her belongings, as payment.

“I was completely hopeless,” Toloui said, “and I thought I was going to be dead. And when I was released, I thought it was a miracle.”

In January, Toloui fled Iran with her children. She eventually arrived in the u.s. with help from Iranian American activists. But her husband remains there, forbidden to leave by the regime.

Ledeen says there are countless other dissidents like Toloui in Iran and that opposition to the harsh rule of the mullahs is growing.

“People are not paid for long periods of time. Nine months, 12 months, 16 months, who knows?” he said. “A long time. So they strike and they demand to be paid. And those demonstrations and strikes, which begin as pure economic protests, rapidly turn into calls for the end of the regime.”

Ledeen says that the u.s. hasn't done enough to exploit this internal unrest. He points to strong American support for anti-communist groups like Lech Walesa's Solidarity Movement during the cold war as a blueprint that the U.S could follow in Iran.

But that may be an uphill battle. The u.s led by the State Department is currently trying to reign in the Iranian regime through diplomacy and negotiations.

"When Senator Santorum introduced an amendment in the Senate that would have given more money to support democracy in inside Iran...,” said Ledeen, ”The Secretary of State sent an angry letter to the Senate saying, we don't want this. This'll make our negotiations more difficult.”

Here in Washington, most experts agree that the best way to achieve regime change in Iran is from within. That's why Amir Fakhraver and Roya Toloui are vowing to continue their efforts. Their dream is to one day return to a free, democratic Iran, where torture and intimidation are a thing of the past.

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/060905a.aspx

http://www.activistchat.com/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.activistchat.com

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