A letter from Maryam Hosseinkhah

Here is partial translation of Maryam Hosseinkhah's letter from Iran's Evin prison. Maryam is a Women's Rights activist that was imprisoned just recently for her efforts towards the "One Million Signature Campaign to change Discriminatory laws towards women." Additionally, Jelveh Javaheri, another women's rights activist, was imprisoned as well.


Here is Prison and I am a women amongst other women whose pains are Examples of Inequality

By Maryam Hosseinkhah from the 3rd public division of Evin’s women prison
Monday, 28th of Aban, 1386

Here is prison, the women’s prison of Evin. It is not the first time that I come here. The first time I was a reporter going along with the head of the detention center interviewing the inmates. I was going from cell to cell and for the first time was listening to the stories of women imprisoned in the four walls of the cell, who were accused of drug addiction, prostitution and murder. I could only write a few words, only as much as the detention head would allow. It was that very day that all the inmates in the presence of the guards would describe that they did not have any problems, but when leaving they put a crumpled piece of paper in my pocked written: “Please help us, here no one else will.”

The second time I was a prisoner as well, exactly like all the prisoners in the division. 30 of the other women activists were in solitary confinement and I was disheveled and worried, amongst the women who I always wrote about their woes. I had the same unknown lost fate as my friends. That day I was a guest that was to leave very quickly.

This time is the third time, however everything is different. Now with my 100,000 million toman (~$100,000) bail, I am one of them. One of hundreds of women who for years are entangled in the tall walls of Evin and has no one to help. Neither the law helps them, nor family, nor any one else. The true definition of helplessness can be learned here, in the eyes of these inmates. Inmates where if the law was a little, just a little, more fair, would be in their homes next to their children. Women who have no resemblance to the cliché of women inmates. .....

read the rest in farsi at:
http://www.we4change.info/spip.php?article1383