By Pishtaz and AFP | 2023-11-14

The protest movement that erupted in Iran last year has transformed both Iran and its prisons, said an Iranian-French academic who returned to Paris last month after being held in Iran since 2019.

Fariba Adelkhah, a researcher at the SciencesPo university in Paris, was allowed to leave Iran in October after a four-and-a-half year ordeal that began with her sudden arrest in 2019 and her incarceration in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.

In prison, she witnessed the courage of her fellow woman inmates amid the widespread protests across the country which morphed into the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement.

In an interview in Paris, Adelkhah, who was released from prison in February but was banned from leaving Iran for several months afterward, said that female political prisoners often sang together in a show of defiance.

The "Women, Life, Freedom" movement "has changed Iranian society and also its prisons," she said.

In Evin, the movement brought together inmates from all walks of life, including rights activists, environmentalists, political opponents and representatives of religious minorities, said Adelkhah.

"We became united by this cause," said the 64-year-old researcher, who specializes in Iranian religion and politics.

Adelkhah was arrested on June 5, 2019, at the airport in Tehran, where she was waiting for her companion Roland Marchal. Neatly dressed security agents "very respectfully" asked her to follow them, she said.

Several hours later she was questioned for the first time, her head "facing the wall."

'Psychological humiliation'

Adelkhah said she was subjected to many other interrogations after the one at the airport, but she was never beaten.

"This [physical violence] happens very often to men [in Iranian prisons], but I never heard women mention it when I was detained," she said.

"But the absence of physical violence does not prevent constant psychological humiliation," she quickly added.

The researcher was eventually sentenced to six years in prison. A five-year term was handed down for "colluding with foreigners" and another one, for one year, for "propaganda against the Islamic Republic," she said.

Marchal, a French sociologist specialising in sub-Saharan Africa, was arrested along with Adelkhah. He was released in March 2020 as part of a prisoner exchange between Tehran and Paris.

"I still don't understand what I was accused of," Adelkhah said.

While in jail, Adelkhah and another prisoner, Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, staged a hunger strike that lasted 50 days.

They were among some two dozen Western passport holders held in Iran in what activists and some governments have termed a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking.

Some have now been released, including all the US nationals, but about a dozen Europeans are still believed to be held -- eight dual nationals and four French nationals among them.

Changing the status quo

Since the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement began, woman prisoners have been steadily defying authorities in Evin, located in the hills of northern Tehran.

Inside the prison, female inmates are bareheaded among themselves but are required to cover their hair if a man enters their space or if they leave for visits with their lawyers or for hospital visits.

After the protests began, however, "nearly no one wore the veil" when a man entered, Adelkhah said.

The family of activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, currently imprisoned in Evin, has said she was denied a visit with her lawyer as well as a visit to the hospital because she refused to cover her hair.

Adelkhah praised the 51-year-old activist, who is regarded as one of the women spearheading the uprising.

Mohammadi, who has been repeatedly jailed -- most recently since 2021 -- has turned prison into "a space of combat, of protest par excellence," Adelkhah said.

Adelkhah said she was still in Iran when Mohammadi earned the Nobel Peace Prize in early October, and saw passersby's smiles in the streets after the announcement of Mohammadi's win.

The Iranian regime has quashed the daily protests, but the slogan "Women, Life, Freedom" has become part of Iranian culture, Adelkhah said.

"The Islamic Republic is forced to give ground over many things," she added.

Today, like-minded Iranian women greet each other when they go out without their headscarves. This used to be "unthinkable," said the researcher.