Political Prisoners Resist Handcuffs and Shackles

On June 4, 2016, prison authorities transferred political prisoner Afshin Baymani from Rajaei Shahr Prison to a hospital in Karaj because of heart and pulmonary illnesses. The hospital was crowded and he was forced to sit on a chair in the corridor while handcuffed and shackled. After a few hours in this humiliating position, he was returned to prison without being examined by a doctor. The same day Baymani announced that he was going on a hunger strike in protest against his treatment.

Mahmoud Naji has been in Rajaei Shahr Prison since 2011, held on charges of espionage. Recently, he declined to go to the last session of his trial. He considers the charges and against him, and the verdict handed down to him, to be unjust. He refuses to be handcuffed during his court appearance. Following Najii’s protest, an officer on duty at Ward 2 assaulted him, and the cleric assigned to the ward broke his arm.

In recent years, many prisoners of conscious and political prisoners in Iran have refused to go to hospital in handcuffs, shackles or a prison uniform. They have even refused to appear in court because they believe that handcuffs, shacklers and prison uniforms are weapons order to pressure and humiliate them.

According to first proviso to Article 235 of the Iranian Prisons Organization’s bylaws, shackling or handcuffing prisoners as they attend court or go to the hospital is not obligatory. But prison authorities and guards have often ignored this.

“We stood our ground”

Ali, an inmate held at Ward 12 at Rajaei Shahr prison, says that he would never agree to be chained to a hospital bed like an animal. “I prefer agonizing physical pain to going to the hospital in that manner,” he said. 

Ali says that his resistance was inspired by the imprisoned members of the Sufi group the Gonabadi Dervishes. From them, he says he learned that a human being has dignity, and nobody has the right to humiliate him because of his opinions. He was also spurred on by a statement issued by political prisoners in late 2012, protesting against the practice of handcuffing and shackling inmates during hospital transfers. He says he “became determined” not to endure this type of treatment.  

Recently published photographs of Omid Kokabee, the young nuclear physicist who has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for refusing to work on Iran’s nuclear program, have led to widespread international reactions. One photograph shows him in the hospital in handcuffs and shackles. “It is really sad that Iran cannot treat its citizens decently,” wrote Iranian-American space scientist Firouz Naderi on his Facebook page. “In a country like America, they put your name on an asteroid, while over there they chain you to the hospital bed.” NASA named an asteroid “Naderi” in his honor, which Naderi announced on Facebook earlier this year. 

“In late summer of 2013, I felt stabbing pains in my heart every night,” a Gonabadi Dervish who has spent the last four years in prison told IranWire. “I had a history of it, but it became worse after days of interrogation. To send us to the hospital they forced us to wear striped uniforms and we were handcuffed and shackled. Imagine that. In prison we did not wear those uniforms, but we had to wear them when going to the hospital. My friends and I consulted with each other and decided to forego our treatment if we had to be handcuffed and shackled. A couple of us were really in a bad way. One had a lung infection and Hamid Reza Moradi was in danger of dying of arteriosclerosis. But we stood our ground.”

Shackles —Even for Somebody who Can’t Walk

“Rasoul Hardani was unable to walk without the help of two canes,” the Gonabadi Dervish prisoner said. “His legs were swollen badly and he was in pain, but they sent him to the hospital in handcuffs and ankle shackles. The ambulance had no gurney and they laid him down on the floor.”

The prisoner of conscious also mentions the cases of Reza Entesari and Afshin Karampour, who both endured broken arms during interrogations. They decided to refuse hospital treatment because they did not want to be handcuffed.

Some of the most famous photographs of prisoners of conscious in Iran’s recent history is of human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. While she was in prison, her children had a brief opportunity to meet her during her appearance in court, but her husband did not want the children to see her in handcuffs. The photographs of Sotoudeh hugging and talking with her husband while she is handcuffed have now been widely circulated, a visual reminder of the injustice political prisoners continue to face in Iran’s prisons.