Cartoon by Elham Ataeiazar

My fighting sisters

WRITING AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY YALDA MOAIERY

The Globe and Mail: Yalda Moaiery is an Iranian photojournalist who has covered conflict, war and natural disasters for the past 20 years. She was awarded the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award in 2023.

Soon after the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman who died on Sept. 16, 2022, after being taken into police custody for violating Iran’s hijab laws, massive protests broke out across Iran. More than 500 people were killed in a brutal crackdown against the protesters, and thousands were arrested.

I was one of them.

I was arrested on Sept. 19, 2022. After a month alone in a cell, I spent the next two months with about 1,000 others who had been arrested, in Qarchack, a prison for women in Tehran. We were of different ages, and different economic and social classes, but we’d all felt compelled to join together to call out injustice. Many of my fellow detainees had been beaten during their arrest. Many were subjected to mental and emotional abuse. Some of them were sexually assaulted.

I found myself with about 160 other women in a cage that was designed for only 50 people. Many of us had to sleep on the floor, with only rough blankets for cover; there were not enough toilets; there was a lack of fresh air; many women had to shave their hair to combat the lice that were spreading among the prisoners; we did not have enough food to eat. They tried to break us.

I was released on bail in December. Then, in February of 2023, the remaining prisoners were released and granted amnesty by the leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But even now, many of the women who were in prison with me are still dealing with the psychological effects of their imprisonment, and have been unable to return to their former lives.

As a photographer, I wanted to capture what had occurred during the protests – who had been arrested, and what they had gone through. And so I asked some of these women to return to the site of their arrest.

This project pays tribute to all the people who protested, some of whom no one has heard from. They are my fighting sisters >>>